Puella Magi Annika Magica: Awakening
by Blackjack488
Summary: [Pre-rebellion, post-show] Annika is in love. Serena has been the object of her affections for months now. But when an offered date goes wrong, Annika finds that her crush is involved in so much more than she originally knew. Without any warning, Annika is thrust into the world of Magical Girls, embroiled in the midst of a conspiracy with the survival of the universe on the line.
1. 1: Fancy Meeting You Here

**1: Fancy Meeting You Here**

"Welcome to Coffeebucks. What can I get for you?"

The words were robotic, her face almost dead-eyed as the long shift started getting to her.

"Um…could I get a nonfat iced latte? Oh, and a coffee cake?"

"Sure." Punching in the appropriate buttons and scrawling the appropriate letters on the cup, nearly on automatic, the woman's mind started wandering a bit. She still had two hours left on her shift, and she was already exhausted. Her legs felt like they were trying to reach up through my torso and kill her, and the migraine from this morning was coming back again.

 _'I think this is what professional runners call the Wall…'_ she thought to herself.

"That'll be five fifty-two."

He handed her a debit card, which she dutifully swiped. The receipt printed, the money went through, and she made a quick detour to the pastry cabinet to grab the appropriate cake.

"There you go, sir! Have a wonderful day!"

"Th-thanks. You too."

 _'It will only be wonderful if this entire building gets crushed by a meteor or some shit. Anything to make this shift end.'_

The man moved off to the side to get his drink, while the barista looked over the near-empty café. Very few people were here, and those that were simply sat at tables and idly stared at their computers. It was a dead day in every sense of the phrase.

She picked at what semi-short dirty-blonde hair fell into her doe-brown eyes. For reasons she couldn't fathom, her hair had been particularly stubborn about the whole 'looking nice' thing, and it still wasn't cooperating. Probably something to do with the weirdly humid weather that was causing all kinds of other problems in her life.

It struck her that she was being melodramatic.

It also struck her that she had good reasons to be melodramatic.

After all, today was shaping up to be one of Those Days.

Those Days when you bump into every single one of your bitterest exes within an hour of each other. Those Days when you're on your way to a job interview and step in dog shit just outside the building, with just slightly too little time to go home and change. Those Days when everything goes wrong, the world feels like it's slowly ending, and you just want to curl up and—

"Hey, you."

"Bwuh? EEP! Um…h-hey."

Immediately, she could feel traces of heat running to her cheeks. Because here…here was a penultimate specimen of female beauty. A few inches taller than the barista was (though most people were), with long black hair that was tied up in a pony that stretched to her shoulder blades. Piercing blue eyes that glimmered with a kind of tenderness, no matter what the rest of her face looked like. Healthily-tanned skin, with a sparse population of freckles that had settled below the middle of her cheekbones. A small, thin scar that stretched from her right cheek to her adams apple, jumping a smidgeon of space in-between, that she just wanted to kiss and nibble at forever. A simple grey-green longsleeve and jeans, covered by a long black jacket and a pair of black leather boots that the barista desperately wanted to tear from her body because…just…GUH! Beautiful didn't even begin to describe it! She practically radiated glamour and awesome in the kind of way only an angel could!

"How've you been, Annie?" she asked, with a voice smooth as silk and just rough enough around the edges to make her sound like a tomboy.

Annie blushed harder. Again with that nickname. "Annie." Not "Nika", not "Annika", not "Ms. Mara". "Annie". It made her feel like this woman was special enough to get a nickname only she was allowed to use, and it made her feel lighter than _you haven't answered the question, Nika, COME ON!_

Covering her silence with a quick little cough, she answered, "A-alright. I mean…it's been one of those days, but I'm getting by, y'know?" _'Oh god, you're babbling, quick, hand off the torch!'_ "W-what about you, Serena? How're you doing?"

Serena chuckled. "Busy. Work's been getting pretty hectic lately, so I've been keeping on my toes a lot."

"Oh yeah. You work at a Delivery Company, right?"

"Right again. Geez, at this point, you know me better than I do."

"Well, it's just that you told me a couple weeks ago."

"O-oh. Right."

"You honestly don't remember that?"

"Must've slipped my mind."

There was a brief moment of silence, in which Annie realized something.

 _'This is it. You're not gonna get a chance better than this!'_

"Speaking of things slipping my mind, maybe I should actually order something."

"Oh! Right, yeah. I take it you want the usual?"

Rather than nodding or saying yes, Serena simply stared at the menu on the wall, face scrunching up in thought in ways that tickled something deep in Annie's gut.

 _'Come on, come on, come ON! You can do this! You've been practicing for how long now!?'_

"Actually, how's the…pumpkin spice latte thing?"

"Oh, that? I haven't tried it, but my friend Linda tells me it's pretty good."

"Mmm. In that case, I think I'll get that instead. Feeling kind of adventurous."

Serena handed over her card, which Annika mechanically took while punching buttons.

 _'She even said she's feeling adventurous! It doesn't get better than this! Go! GO!'_

"S-so…" Annie stammered out, before collecting her words and trying again. "So…my best friend is having her housewarming party on Friday, and we're all gonna get drunk and heckle whatever bad B-movies we can find. Wanna come along?"

"Ha! Sounds awesome! What time is it?"

"Um…6, I think. It'll probably go kinda late."

"Oh. Actually…I think I'll have work then."

"O-oh." Annie did her best to keep the pain of rejection off her face. "How late?"

"Ten."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Some other time, though!"

"Y-yeah." The machine printed out the receipt, and she handed it back along with the card. "Some other time."

"Well, have fun at that party!"

"Thanks."

"Catcha later!"

"You too."

* * *

"SHE TURNED ME DOWN!" _Flump!_

From behind the counter, Don simply turned and quirked an eyebrow at Annika. Upon entering the restaurant, she had immediately cried out those words and flumped onto the counter. The two of them got one or two weird looks, but most people were too busy with their own lives.

"Who did what now?" he asked, once he was close enough.

"That girl! That one girl who I was telling you about and who I wanted to ask out tomorrow but she ended up coming in today so I asked her out anyway and she _turned me down!_ "

"…Serena, right?"

"Mmm."

"Ouch. I'm sorry, Nika."

Annika groaned, moving her head and arms so that they rested a little more comfortably. "Why does this kind of thing always end up happening?"

Don just chuckled as he prepared a plate of sushi. "I wouldn't say _always_ …"

"I guess you're right. Still, it's frustrating."

"Well…" he placed the finished plate in front of her before moving on to another. "…honestly, I think you're taking this a little too hard." When she moved to glare at him, he cut her off, "By which I mean this: we both know you're the kind of person who gets obsessive when it comes to romance. Hell, it's part of your charm. But it also means that you never realize how times like these _aren't the end of the world_. Yeah, it hurts, but life will go on, and the sooner you realize that, the better it'll be for everyone. Okay?"

Annika simply mulled those words over, before reaching out, grabbing a piece of sushi from the plate, and popping it into her mouth. While she registered the taste, she also didn't care enough to notice it. Which was a shame, because Don made some damn good sushi.

"Still sucks, though," she finally muttered.

"Yeah, love tends to do that. But it'll work out."

"Work out like you and Cerise?"

"Exactly."

Annika narrowed her eyes at him, before finally letting out a long sigh.

"I just felt like she was the one, y'know? And then the minute I ask, she throws out some excuse and bails? Auuuugh! Why can't I ever have nice things!?"

"What were her words, exactly?"

"That she had work until ten, and we'd save it for some other time."

"Then she's busy, and you'll see her again. Geez, and here I was thinking she'd actually said no."

"But she _did_ say no! Come on, Don, when a girl says, 'maybe some other time,' it means no!"

"Unless that girl has a legitimate excuse out of her control, otherwise known as work. Just watch, come Wednesday, she'll be right there at her normal time." And with that, he set her usual drink before her and went back to making his sushi.

Nika just sighed again, taking a sip of the offered green tea.

* * *

The week had passed with no sign of Serena.

Even though she normally came in at 10 on Wednesdays and Fridays, she had simply vanished.

 _'Did I scare her off? Has she gone running to a different coffee shop or something? What if she never comes back?'_

Nika took a deep breath and forced herself to let it out slowly. Despite her heart's best attempts to make it go otherwise, the week _had_ gotten better as Don predicted it would. There was no point in diving back into heartbreak land now that things were looking up.

That said, it was a little telling that Serena would suddenly disappear once Nika'd finally asked her out. If it'd been a legitimate work thing, she'd have come in anyways. Her only reason to not drop by Coffeebucks was Nika herself, which…yeah, that was pretty telling.

Nika shook her head again. Then sighed and stretched at the crosswalk.

One way or another, it was over and done with.

"Guess there really is no point in worrying, is there?"

So she stuck her hands back in her coat pockets to escape the early-December chill, and resumed her walk home from the party.

To say that housewarming party had been unexpectedly short was like saying driving through downtown during rush hour causes slight delays. Everyone there had fully expected the party to last well into the night, maybe even turn into a sleepover. But then, drinks flowed a little too quickly, Brie passed out, and Cerise and Don decided to break in the new apartment by seeing just how much sex they could get away with without actually calling it sex. It certainly made things awkward enough (particularly for Nika), so most people left after that, and no one wanted to keep the party going when both the venue and the hosts were elsewhere.

Which left Nika walking the long way back home, barely even buzzed and definitely _not_ thinking about what she would have done if Serena had been there too.

She paused as she walked by a Burnin' Bagels.

...…she _was_ kinda peckish. The party had been more about booze and less about sustenance.

After only a few more seconds of indecision, Nika crossed the street and dropped in. After ordering a simple spinach/egg/cheese/ham sandwich, she stood off to the side and idly waited for her bagel.

Until something across the street caught her eye.

It took a few seconds for her to get a good look at it. But when she did, her heart nearly skipped a beat.

Serena.

Wearing her usual outfit, holding something shiny in one hand and idly glancing around as she walked.

Nika couldn't keep her gut from twisting in frustration. Didn't she have _work_!? Y'know, the kind of thing where people wear uniforms and drive around in special trucks lugging cardboard boxes and generally _not_ doing what Serena was doing _right now_!?

So that whole thing with her being busy was some kind of sham? Just to get out of going on a date? Seriously, what the hell!?

As Serena started vanishing from view down the road, Nika shot a quick glance at her bagel.

Still cooking.

…if she didn't leave now, she'd lose her. Maybe never find out what the hell was going on.

…

"God damn it," she muttered under her breath, and power-walked out. She thought she'd heard someone say something behind her, but she made sure that she didn't hear them.

She kept tailing her, making sure she stayed just far enough back to look inconspicuous. From what she could tell, Serena simply walked along, taking turns at random and occasionally stopping to consult whatever shiny thing she was holding in her hand. It also looked like she was talking to someone, but Nika couldn't see who.

Wait a minute…she was on the phone!

So who was she talking to? What was in her other hand? And why were the two of them suddenly in a less-friendly part of town, which was sparsely populated at best?

Seeming to notice their change in surroundings, Serena glanced around one last time before closing her phone and slipping it into her pocket.

 _'Huh?'_

Taking another glance at the shiny…whatever…in her hand, Serena turned down a nearby alleyway. Figuring it was more or less safe, Annika started getting a little closer in her tailing efforts. Within earshot, at least.

"How can it not be around here? Just take a damn feel!"

 _'Ooookay…'_

After a couple seconds where she looked like she was listening to a particularly startling monologue, she finally just muttered, "Well, whatever the case is, it's nearby."

Another pause.

"Because I can, okay!? I can smell it."

There was another brief pause, before she snapped at nothing, "Stop with the logic, dammit!"

Serena continued walking in relative silence, resorting to her old pattern of walking for a bit, then checking the shiny thing (which Nika could now see was shaped like an egg, only slightly smaller) before continuing onward.

And with every step she took, Annika simply got more and more confused. For starters, why was she talking to herself like that? It was getting more than a little creepy. And most importantly, what was she looking for in this part of town, and what'd it have to do with that shiny blue egg thing?

It was weird. At first, she'd just wanted to know why Serena'd lied about having work. But now, Annika desperately wanted to know just what the hell her friend was involved in.

Well...friend…acquaintance may have been more accurate.

After another minute of walking, Serena finally stopped in front of a large, abandoned warehouse-looking building. She took another glance at the shiny egg-thing, then back at the building, before closing her hands together.

"Alright, I guess this is it."

Then she glanced back around, and Annika was forced to hide briefly behind the corner of a building. And after waiting a couple seconds, there was a weird sound, like a hundred phonebooks getting ripped all at once.

And when she glanced back around the corner, all she got were more questions.

Because sitting right there, just inside the abandoned warehouse, was a bright white portal-looking thing. Shimmering light and color spilling out and twirling and twisting inside it like a piece of abstract art. And Serena was nowhere to be found.

Nika glanced around a few more times, before finally tiptoeing closer to the weird portal thing. Only to realize that it was closing. Once again, if she delayed, she'd never find out whatever the hell was going on.

So she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sprinted through.

There was a brief, yet powerful, tingling throughout her entire body, accompanied by a weird pulsating hum. But it was over as soon as it began, and when Nika opened her eyes again, what she saw was a whole new kind of hell.

Everything around her looked subtly off, like it was made of paper cutouts without ever slimming down to two dimensions. The whole world was made of narrow corridors, a veritable labyrinth of towering shoddy buildings, rusty fire escapes, and boarded-up windows. The sky wasn't even present, with the buildings just fading into smog a few dozen meters above her. And even worse, despite the fact that every building was clearly abandoned, she could see shadowy figures flitting around in the buildings and through the foggy skies.

And Serena herself had all but vanished.

She turned around, looking for the portal, but the corridor simply continued on behind her.

"Serena…where the hell have you gone?"

She began walking, searching desperately for any sign of her wayward friend (acquaintance, really). Once she came to her first intersection, though, she realized fairly quickly that she'd run into a small problem. Namely, navigating this place was damn near impossible.

"Well, the rule to mazes is always go left, right?"

The world didn't really respond, in any other form than distant snickering and snarling.

Suddenly, she felt the faint sense of someone breathing on the back of her neck. Nika frantically jumped and spun on one heel, eyes scouring the area behind her. But...no. Nothing there. Just the faint wisps of robed figures always just out of sight.

Backing away as much as she could while still working her hardest to look in every direction at once, she turned to the left and began sprinting.

This wasn't her sprints to catch the bus, or even the paced-out nature of the Mile way back in high school. This was Annika Mara's honest-to-god sprint for her life.

Which was only made worse by the fact that the robed figures, getting closer while still staying hidden in the shadows, were easily keeping pace with her.

Her gaze darted to one who'd gotten pretty close, and she finally got her first good look at her pursuers.

It was vaguely humanoid, if taller than anyone she'd met, and clad entirely in an androgynous white robe. Its skin was the pale grey of really old corpses, its body long and lanky. Its face seemed normal in shape, but where its eyes should've been, there was only multicolored static surrounding that part of its face like a goddamn cloud of fog.

Nika's eyes took all this information in, but her brain only noticed three key facts.

1) This thing was NOT human.

2) There were at least two dozen more of these chasing her, laughing and giggling as they did like this was some kind of game.

3) This particular zombie-robed abomination was staring at her with a predatory grin on its face.

It squealed in a voice that she couldn't pin any kind of gender or age or anything to, turning through a blown-out storefront window to dive straight for her head. Long, taloned arms appeared from under its robe, reaching out to grab her, and she nearly let herself get caught just by being paralyzed with terror.

She ducked under the attack, letting it sail overhead as she stumbled slightly and nearly lost her footing.

Another corner! She turned down it, nearly crashing into the far wall before getting her footing back and picking up the pace again.

There! At the end of this (really long) alleyway! There was a door! It looked fairly unassuming, but she didn't give a damn. It was something she could hide behind! That's what mattered!

Her legs started to give out, and she could hear the giggles from almost right behind her.

 _"Come on! Just...just a little...!"_

Her lungs were starting to give out, as if trying to punish her for working them so hard.

Her legs were cramping, making her stagger and stumble every other step.

But that didn't matter! She was so...so close!

Then, with one final giggle, the robed flying creeps vanished. Turned tail and scattered in all directions. She was left with precisely two seconds to gauge the meaning of that when the door slammed open.

It rushed up toward her, sweeping her through it despite her never moving at all. She was greeted by another identical door, rushing up to her and slamming open before sweeping her through it.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And when the final door greeted her, she met the strangest, most terrifying sight she'd ever seen.

The whole room was covered in a layer of grime and dirt and spray paint, so much so that the tiny patches of brickwork peeking through seemed more like the covering than the substance. The concrete flooring was cracked and pitted with toxin-filled potholes. Discarded bottles, empty syringes, scraps of paper, cigarette butts, and other assorted trash seeped from every crevice, littering the ground like a second floor. Rusty old chains were draped across the walls, broken balconies, and across the plaza-like space like some kind of spiderweb. And sitting in the middle of this spiderweb was, of course, the spider.

It was huge, easily five meters across, made from grimy rusted metal. Rather than palps, it had two scorpion-like claws, both wide open and eager. And rather than the typical spider head, it had another one of those grinning eyeless faces (though the static was weirdly asymmetrical, sliding down the left side of its face towards its mouth and _dear god why am I noticing this!?_ ). Just being around this thing made her want to curl up in a ball and cry, as well as run for the hills screaming her head off.

The two conflicting emotions battled in her head for a second or two, before she finally settled on "Get the fuck out of here".

Her hand slipped behind her, patting at the wall to look for the doorknob, only to land on a particularly slimy patch of grime.

It grinned wider, crawling towards her with the sound of creaking metal, claws snapping with a sound like gunshots as it seemingly reveled in her terror.

She finally took her eyes off it, turning to search for the door only to find...

...nothing.

"But..." the words fell from her mouth as fast as her hope did. "...but I just...but where...?"

She turned back to it, only to realize it was close enough to spit on. It was grinning in earnest now, revealing pointed teeth inside jaws big enough to fit her head.

Annika wanted to scream.

Wanted to turn and run.

Wanted to do anything other than stand there like a useless lump about to die.

But...where could she run to?

Where could she go?

Part of her knew that, no matter where she ran, she'd just end up flowing here.

All the trash of the world flowed here.

Yeah...that's all she was, really.

Trash.

Just floating along behind her friends for whatever selfish reason she wanted, never actually considering how much she was screwing things up for them.

 _'I guess...this is a fitting punishment...'_

The fear began to ebb out of her as the spider-thing opened its mouth, replaced by a numbing realization.

She would die here.

And for what?

For nothing.

 _ **CLANG!**_

Like a lightning bolt, a long silver halberd came streaking in from nowhere, tearing right through the monster's face and planting itself between the spider and Nika.

The spider simply screamed, staggering backwards, glaring evilly at the windows ringing the "plaza" (at least, that's what she assumed it was doing. It was hard to tell without it having eyes). The robed figures that had clustered around the room were now charging into the windows, screeching in anger.

Only for some across the plaza from Annika to suddenly vaporize into clouds of black smoke.

The halberd in front of her vanished in a flourish of navy-blue light, whereupon Annika finally caught sight of her.

Serena.

Wearing the strangest outfit she'd ever seen: some kind of half-coat over a frilly dress, with a wrist-piece on her right arm that had some six-pointed-star blue gem set into it.

Leaping from a window with another identical halberd raised like a spear.

Then the halberd flashed blue, and grew until it _definitely_ looked like a spear. Whereupon she threw it down at the spider that was now turning to her.

With a streak of blue and a sound like thunder, the spear-berd shot out of her hand and skewered through the spider, severing one of its legs. Its scream reverberated through the room, leaving Nika clutching her head in pain while Serena jumped over to her.

"Nika! Nika, you okay!?"

"I...just... _WHAT!?_ You, and...and that thing, and...!"

"Yeah, you're fine. Just stay here!" Another halberd formed in her hand, which she slammed into the ground. Hundreds of long cords sprouted out of it, forming a protective bubble around Annika.

Serena, apparently satisfied with her work, turned back to the giant junk-spider, yet another halberd forming in her outstretched hand (how many of those did she have!?). The spider rounded on her and charged, but Serena jumped up out of the way just in time, slashing at it again and again to drive it away from the bubble.

"What the fuck is going on!?" Nika found herself shouting.

"Simple. She's a Magical Girl, battling a Nightmare."

The voice had come from right next to her, and at her feet. But when she looked down, all she could see was a little white cat thing with two hand-looking appendages hanging from its ears and a little red teardrop on its back.

"Did you just...talk!?"

"You could certainly call it that, yes."

"A stuffed cat is talking to me..."

"That's rude. I'm not a stuffed cat. I'm Kyubey."

She was about to ask what the ever-loving fuck was going on, when an explosive rattling noise dragged her attention out of the blue bubble. Rusty chains had shot out from every window ringing the building, wrapping around Serena with incredible speed. The spider was huddled off in the opposite corner of the room, several long halberds sticking out of its hide.

"Serena!" she shouted, as the spider began to charge now that its prey was trapped.

Or...was trapped.

Because only a split-second latter, the chains that had wrapped around her shattered, leaving her very much mobile with the spider now in close range.

Another halberd flashed into existence, which Serena proceeded to ram right into the static field that marked its eyes.

That thing _screamed_ , letting out a noise not even the truly tortured could pull off.

All the while, a smiling Serena calmly hovered in front of it and snapped her fingers.

Immediately, silver bolts shout out from the bottom of every halberd lodged into the spider, connected by those same iridescent blue ribbons that made up the bubble of safety. They lodged into the walls, then the cords tightened, dragging the spider off the web and into the air.

With nothing to grab onto, it angrily flailed and tried to shake itself loose, even swinging a few legs in Serena's direction.

But Serena wasn't there anymore. She was just at the base of the smog above them, halberd formed into more of a scythe as it cut through a dozen robed figures (most of the rest of them were fleeing like mad).

At the peak of her jump, her scythe-berd flashed blue and morphed into a spear-berd, which she threw down into the spider.

 _ **Kra-THOOM!**_

Shot by a streak of blue, the spider-thing (hadn't that cat called it a Nightmare?) split in half, then exploded into a cloud of black smoke with one final screech.

And to put the cherry on top of the whole thing, Serena stuck the landing, arms outstretched like a true acrobat.

After only a couple seconds to breathe, the bubble of safety popped and vanished, as the world around them started to twist and bend, before finally fading away and revealing nothing more than the inside of an abandoned warehouse, littered with little black cubes.

Serena's weird outfit flashed blue and vanished, revealing same old (hot as hell) Serena, standing back up to gather the black cubes.

"Well done, Serena," Said the little white cat as it trotted up to her, with a voice that had something off about it she couldn't place. "For a moment, I wasn't sure you could handle a Nightmare that large by yourself."

"Yeah, but I burned way too much magic with that bind and that barrier. Rookie mistake."

"Given the circumstances, a few mistakes are to be expected."

"Expected, but not tolerated." Having gathered up the various black cubes off the ground, Serena stuffed them into her jacket pocket and turned to Nika. "You okay, Annie? You hurt?"

"N-no...no, I'm f-fine..."

"Great. In that case..." Serena marched up to her and grabbed her by the collar, hauling her into the air as her face twisted into pure fury. " _WHAT_ the _HELL_ were you _THINKING!?_ You see a portal to a potentially-lethal Labyrinth, and your first reaction is to _JUMP RIGHT IN!?_ If Kyubey hadn't noticed, or I'd been a few seconds late, _you would be_ _ **DEAD**_ _!_ "

"I'm sorry! I didn't know!"

She looked like she wanted to shout some more, but finally just relented with a long sigh. "Just promise me you won't deal with stuff like that without sticking close to me, okay?"

"Okay, I promise."

"Good. I'm glad you're safe. Just don't scare me like that again."

Serena let Annika go, standing back up to fix her hair and outfit, which had gotten frazzled by her outburst (and presumably, the giant battle not even a minute ago).

"All in all, I'd say a job well done, Serena. And it's very nice to meet you, Ms. Mara."

The cat was placidly smiling at her as he(?) said it, but it was because of that that she finally placed what was wrong with his voice.

She wasn't hearing it with her ears.

She was hearing it _inside her head_.

"...what?"


	2. 2: An Explanation and a Promise

**2: An Explanation and a Promise**

"Nope. Nope nope nope, I'm absolutely, one-million percent _fucking_ ** _done_** _!_ "

"Annie, come on! Be reasonable!"

"No! I just saw some weird giant spider thing try to kill me in some parallel universe and was saved by Ms. Magical Bullshit and her psychic stuffed animal! Reason has left the fucking building! It's been kicked onto the curb and now it's on its way to a nice fucking vacation in Florida!"

 _"_ _I'm not a stuffed animal, I assure you."_

"Kyubey, shut up! You're not helping! Annie, just calm down for two seconds, and give me a chance to explain! I promise it'll make sense!"

" _What_ could you _possibly_ say to make something this _insane_ make sense!?"

"Give me two minutes to explain, and I will, okay!?"

Annika finally slowed her walk to a stop, glancing around to the numerous strange looks the two of them were getting. Most people just minded their own business, walking along with headphones in or phones blathering, especially in this part of town. But even without sound, the two of them must've been a weird sight.

She shoved aside her self-consciousness, and thought hard about this. She could probably just keep walking, go home, and spend the next three hours curled up on her bed trying to process todays' events.

But...could she ever face Serena again if she did that?

Did that even matter?

…...

"...two minutes," she finally growled.

"Huh?"

"You have two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds, starting now. If I'm still not convinced I didn't take a million mushrooms without realizing it, then I'm going home and you're not invited."

"Uh...okay. Can we walk somewhere else, though? I don't wanna draw too much attention."

"...fine."

Serena wrapped her arm around Nika's shoulders, gently pushing her along as the two of them began walking. Part of Annika's mind was buzzing at the fact that the woman she'd been furiously crushing on for the past month was so damn close, but that part of her was drowned out by the part that'd been screaming and flailing at the absurdity of...whatever that was earlier (not to mention, how close to death she'd come).

"Okay...so...where to begin?" After a few moments of thought, Serena began explaining. "So...to start off, there's a sort of underlying field running throughout the universe called the Miasma. Think of it basically like the undercurrent of pain and despair that runs throughout the universe. The more a sentient being feels those emotions, the more they add to the Miasma and thicken it in that area. Follow so far?"

"More or less."

"Okay, good. So, when the Miasma gets thick enough in one spot, it'll coalesce into something called a Wraith. That's those guys in robes you saw back there. And when fifty Wraiths get together into one spot, they combine into something called a Nightmare."

"That's the big spider-thing?"

"Yeah. Now, because they're born through the Miasma and need regular doses of the stuff to survive, they basically try to spread that emotion as much as possible, pushing people into collapsing into despair so they feed the Miasma as much as possible. Wraiths aren't too smart about it...or in general really...but Nightmares are a lot more clever. Clever enough to know Magical Girls are after them, so they spend the daylight hours hiding in pocket dimensions called Labyrinths, and feed the Miasma by messing with people in their sleep. Hence the name."

"Okay. So what's a Magical Girl?"

"Magical Girls are people who've made a contract with Kyubey, to get one wish in exchange for a lifetime hunting Wraiths and whatnot. We keep the Miasma in check as best we can, with liberal application of...well, you saw."

"Mmmm."

"As for the specifics..." Serena held out her hand, that familiar steel ring flashing blue to reveal a small, egg-shaped muddy-blue gem wrapped in a silver cage-like casing. "...this is my Soul Gem. Essentially, it's me, extracted and packaged up into a handy little gem. As long as that's fine, I can recover from any injury."

Nika started slightly. That ring was something _that_ important? She'd seen it a million times and had never thought anything of it. Now...she couldn't help but stare at it a little.

"Now, see how muddy it looks?"

"Y-yeah, actually..."

"Mmm. That means I'm running low on magic. The more I use, the darker it gets. And when it goes completely black, it shatters, all that pollution releases into the Miasma, and my soul is carried away by the Law of the Cycles."

"Carried where? By who?"

"Not a clue. All I know is, it means I die."

Nika stared at her in shock. Something that apparently prompted laughter, for no fathomable reason.

"Lucky for me, there's a way out." From within her pocket, she pulled a few of the small black cubes. Most were barely the size of keys on a computer keyboard, while the one big one was about the size of a ping-pong ball. "These are called Grief Cubes. They're little pockets of Miasma, and I guess you could think of them as Soul Gems for Wraiths and Nightmares." Nika stared at them, totally not backing away slightly. Serena didn't seem to notice, though. "Right now, they're kinda dormant, since I shot the ever-loving hell out of them. But when they're like this, they're ridiculously hungry for any kind of Miasma. Which means, if I put this next to that..."

She set the grief cubes next to her soul gem on one open hand, and thin streams of black smoke began streaming from the latter to the former. Within a minute, the cubes were pitch-black, and the soul gem was shining with a bright indigo light. Throughout the whole process, they'd stopped at a crosswalk, and Serena was nervously glancing around for passers-by while Nika watched transfixed.

"That's..."

"Kinda cool, right? That's why Grief Cubes are so important. With that, all the magic I used in the fight is restored, and I even still have a few little ones left over. Which is always nice."

"But they're so dark now...is that something bad?"

Serena chuckled. "Yeah, that's something kinda bad. Like I said, they're pockets of Miasma. So if they collect too much, they could re-hatch a Wraith or Nightmare."

And just like that, the terror was back. "But...but then, there'd be no end to them! The miasma would just spread infinitely until it consumed the entire universe!"

Serena laughed slightly, muttering "Told you she'd catch on quick", while Kyubey finally chimed in from his perch on Serena's shoulder.

 _"_ _That's where I come in. In addition to contracting new Magical Girls, one of my duties is destroying Grief Cubes that have become too dense."_

"Destroying?"

 _"_ _Yes. Observe..."_ That teardrop shape on its back popped open, and Serena casually tossed the entire handful of grief cubes into its...back. Whereupon, the little shape closed again, flashed slightly, and Kyubey bobbed his head as if he were chewing.

"You...ate it? With your back?"

 _"_ _In a manner of speaking. My species developed the technology needed to destroy Grief Cubes, converting the Miasma within into energy that could be used free of the laws of thermodynamics. However, since we lack the ability to destroy Wraiths and Nightmares on our own, we contract Magical Girls across the universe to do it for us."_

"Quite the symbiosis we have going, really," Serena added, scratching the Kyubey under its chin.

Annika simply plodded along beside Serena, taking it all in and running through the insanity in her head. At the very least, the insanity was self-consistent now. As much as it could be when talking about wishes and magic and evil monsters made of negative emotions.

"You follow all that okay?"

"Y-yeah. I mean, sure, all this feels like some corny anime, and there are some things I wanna ask, but...well...I'm following along okay."

Serena laughed, and now that the part of her going wild over the absurdity had died down, the obsessively romantic part of her brain had adequate space to obsess over how pretty her laugh was. "Well, I can tell you right now that it's entirely real, as absurd as it can get. Anyways, you had some questions?"

"Yeah. First, you said fifty Wraiths merge to make a Nightmare. But what happens when fifty Nightmares merge?"

"Well...we don't know, really." Serena morphed her soul gem back into a ring and slipped it on. "From what I hear, something like that almost happened once or twice throughout history, but the Magical Girls around then noticed what was going on and put a stop to it before it could get to that point. However, the common assumption is that it'd be stronger and smarter than a Nightmare, which is a pretty scary prospect if you ask me. We call it a Demon."

"But there's never been a...Demon, before?"

"No. Came close here and there, but never got to that point."

"Okay. Second question, which you already kind of hinted at: What does the Magical Girl culture look like?"

Serena thought about that a moment before responding. "Tense, really. We're all competing for territory unless we're in a group, but none of us really wanna waste magic fighting each other, so we all kinda share a cold-war pact. That said, we share information, we have our own little forum going online, and some pretty big groups do pop up here and there. It's just that the way things work kinda favors loners, y'know? Even if a hundred girls take down a Nightmare, it still only drops one grief cube."

Nika nodded. "Makes sense. Last question, more for Kyubey than you: Can you make a contract with anyone, and how big of wishes are we talking about?"

Kyubey shifted his perch to sit on the shoulder facing Annika. _"While I can, theoretically, make a contract with anyone, not all Magical Girls are created equal. And if too many Magical Girls are in one area, they will tend to fight with each other more than hunt Grief Cubes. As such, it's best to focus on filling in large territories with those who have the most latent potential. And as for wishes, while their scope is somewhat limited by the latent potential involved, they can be virtually anything. However, the last thing we want is to have someone regret their wish, as their soul gem would then shatter and rob us of a valuable asset."_

"So you focus on girls in certain areas with lots of potential and wishes that won't backfire?"

 _"_ _Precisely."_

"...I guess that makes sense."

"Mmmm. Any more questions?"

"Actually, yeah, just one more."

"Which is?"

"Where the hell are we going?"

Serena blinked, then glanced around, as if realizing for the first time that neither of them had a damn clue where they were. The low-rent apartments had been replaced by warehouses and storefronts, and the smell of ocean was just barely perceptible under the overwhelming scent of smog.

"Uh...well...it's in the port area..."

Annika nodded.

"Um...west side of the city..." she spotted the nearest street signs and jumped with joy. "See, right there! Fifth Street and Avondale Road! I know exactly where we are!"

"Ahuh."

"So, from here, we just go...um..."

Annika tried her very hardest not to smirk. After only ever seeing the cool badass Serena, this egotistical dork was both surprising, enlightening, and hilarious to witness.

She stumbled over her words for a few more seconds, before finally deflating. "Annie, where do you live?"

Nika finally let herself smile. "Twenty-fifth and Markson."

"R-right! Exactly! Twenty-fifth and Markson! This way!" With nothing but boundless energy, she began marching down one of the streets. Annie followed behind her, trying her hardest not to laugh.

"A-Any more questions?"

"Not right now. I'm sure I'll think of some later, though."

"Fair enough." They walked for another block, before Serena suddenly perked up. "Oh, that reminds me! Didn't you have a party tonight? How'd that go?"

Nika started. Had that been today? It felt like ages ago. Did that Nightmare thing mess with her head or something?

She forced on her best smile and tried to say, "G-Great! It went really, really..." her fake smile didn't last long, and she avoided Serena's piercing gaze. "Honestly, the booze flowed a little too fast, and things got awkward. So we all ended up leaving early. You didn't miss much."

"Oh. Yeah, I was wondering what you were doing out and about. I'm sorry."

"I should be the one apologizing. I almost invited you to a disaster."

"Ah, but you didn't, did you? So there's nothing to apologize for." She smiled. "Besides, I wasn't apologizing, I was offering condolences."

"Condolences? Seriously? No one died, okay?"

"Huh? Condolences as in, 'I'm sorry things didn't go well'. It doesn't necessarily mean anyone died. Honestly..."

"Meh. In any case, there's always another time, right?"

"...I mean, my schedule's pretty full as it is. Miasma won't keep itself in check, right? And I don't think I want you coming on any hunts..."

"Oh. Yeah, right. Sorry I asked."

Serena chuckled nervously and playfully swatted at Nika's hair. "Stop apologizing for everything, Annie . You'll make me feel bad if you do."

"Heh. Sorry."

Serena rolled her eyes.

 _"_ _That said,"_ Kyubey cut in, his little alien voice resonating in her skull, _"I do want to keep an eye on you, Annika Mara. Ever since entering that Labyrinth, something about your perception has changed, and I'd like to study it further."_

"Huh? My perception?"

"What do you mean?"

 _"_ _To explain it with a simple example, imagine a pair of frogs in a pot of boiling water. One of these frogs will always have the same core temperature, and thus will feel the surrounding temperature from the same point of reference. The other has a core temperature that gradually changes to match its environment. If you were to gradually bring this pot of water to a boil, which of the two frogs would notice and hop out?"_

Serena looked thoroughly stumped, while Annika tapped her lips in thought. "The first frog, right?"

 _"_ _Precisely. Using this example, the Miasma correlates to the pot of water, the temperature to its concentration, the first frog to Magical Girls, and the second frog to humans. Because their souls are separate from their bodies, Magical Girls are capable of sensing changes in the Miasma and seeing creatures born from it, such as Wraiths and Nightmares, with perfect clarity. Most humans, however, are incapable of this, and even the ones who are typically receive nothing more than a vague sense of the Miasma's concentration."_

"Wait, then...I shouldn't have been able to see that Labyrinth!?"

 _"_ _Yes and no. Normally, you would have a vague sense of your surroundings, and perhaps even be aware of the danger you were in. How humans evolved to be able to sense these changes at all is baffling. Perhaps some learned to avoid areas with concentrated Miasma, since they posed an inherent danger, and passed this trait through the generations, but even we Incubators don't know for sure. However, something about you is unique. You were able to see your surroundings in their Miasma-altered state with perfect clarity, something no normal human has ever accomplished. Furthermore, you were not born with this trait, else we would have noticed sooner, so some event occurred that altered your perceptions, and it likely had to do with that Labyrinth on account of your lack of understanding of Miasmal properties. Whether or not this trait will persist is unclear, but such an exception to the rule demands further study."_

"Kyubey, I know you have a habit of it, but you are _not_ going mad-scientist on my friend."

Even through the shock of finding out that she was somehow special, despite being distinctly non-magical, that word cut into her mind. "We're friends?"

"Well...yeah. I thought that was obvious."

"I mean, we've only met a handful of times, and that was just because you come into my work..."

"Still...after all this, I just thought..."

"Oh! Yeah, I...guess we kinda are, aren't we?"

 _"_ _I apologize to interrupt this courtship, but perhaps we should return to the matter at hand?"_

Nika felt heat slam into her face like a sack of bricks. "C-Courtship!? No, no no no, it's nothing like that, we're just friends! Right Serena!?" No, her voice didn't sound manic, not at all.

Serena glanced over, then laughed, rubbing Nika's head. "You're cute when you blush. You know that?" Her hand fell away, leaving Nika to try her hardest not to obsess over the fact that Serena had just called her cute. "Still, you're right, Kyubey. Like it or not, Annie, you're involved in all this. As much as it kills me to say that..."

 _"_ _So? How would you like to proceed? I'd like to test the limits of her perception by exposing her to at least a Wraith or two, and I'd like to perform this test periodically to see if it fades away anytime soon."_

"Mmm. So I guess she's coming on a hunt or two, at the very least." Serena sighed. "That means the others should know about her, so let's start there. We have a bi-weekly strategy meet, and the next one's this Sunday. Wanna tag along?"

"S-Suuuurrrreeeee..." Totally not obsessing still. Nope, not at all, not even a little bit.

At the very least, Nika snapped back out of it once she realized what she was signing up for. "Oh wait, what's the address? And the time? How many other...erm...Magical Girls will be there?"

She chuckled, even though it faded fast. That was her first clue that something was bothering the object of her affections. "I'll text it to you, it's at noon, and just the three of us. Think you can make it?"

"Y-yeah. I just have a couple classes in the morning, so...I should be fine."

"Alright. What's your number?" She pulled out her phone (a simple flip-phone with no extraneous features, Annika noted) and punched in the appropriate digits as Nika recited them.

"Wait...three of you for this whole city? That seems pretty small..."

"It's not the whole city, just most of it. The outlying suburbs, as well as some districts, belong to our neighbors. And for a territory this small, three's actually a lot. But we don't step on each other because this territory happens to be really damn ripe. So it works out well enough." Having been tapping at her phone through that whole monologue, she finally hit the send button. "There. Successfully texted."

A few seconds later, Nika's phone (a since-outdated iPhone model) sang a jaunty little tune from deep within her pocket. She pulled it out, opened the text, and glanced it over before slipping her phone back intgo its hidey-hole. "Great! See you there!"

"Yeah. See you there."

That was the second sign that something was wrong. She didn't sound excited; hell, if anything, she sounded depressed. Did she think this was a second date? More importantly, did she think this was a second date _and she didn't want to go_?

Better probe subtly.

"You okay? That Nightmare thing didn't mess with your head, did it?"

"No. No, I'm fine. It's just..." She glanced at Nika, back at the ground, then finally closed her eyes altogether with a long sigh. "Sorry. This is kind of embarrasing, but...I was secretly hoping that you'd be the only friend I have not involved with all this crap. Hell, you'd be the _first_ friend I've had that's anything approaching normal. Now here you are, with your special vision and learning Magical Girl politics and now you're going to meet the others. It's...hard to accept, y'know?"

Annika stared at her for what felt like anywhere from a few seconds to a full minute. She'd stopped walking, having reached her apartment building, so she had ample opportunity to stare in something bordering on shock.

Was that really how things were?

Annika was her first normal friend?

But...didn't she have a life before becoming a Magical Girl?

 _'…...what if she didn't?'_

 _'If she didn't...how important to her would that first friend be?'_

Nika thought back to the early days of their friendship (back when it was an acquaintanceship). Serena had always seemed to relax when the two were talking. Naturally, Nika's rose-colored glasses made her insist that it was because Serena liked her back, but...now that made perfect sense. She was relaxing because it had nothing to do with her long, possibly-perpetual war. Nika had been an island of calm and comfort in the dark storm that was Serena's life (okay, maybe she was jumping to conclusions there, but she'd be damned if it didn't fit).

And now what? Now that island was disappearing, possibly forever, and there didn't seem to be much either of them could do about it.

No wonder she looked scared.

But in that same moment, Annika realized exactly what she needed to say. Even if she didn't have the words just yet.

So she closed her eyes, smiled softly, and started winging it.

"Look, Serena...I'll be the first to admit that I'm scared to death of getting involved in this. I almost died today. Hell, I'd be done for if it weren't for some hardcore convenience, and I'm sure when that registers properly in my brain, I'll be a screaming mess for a few weeks. "

"I fail to see your point."

"My _point_ is...I don't think I could ever do anything like what you did today. I'd be too scared...probably screw it all up and end up dead. So it's better for everyone if I stay where I am, and remain an observer looking in on this whole secret world of yours.

"But...that means you're not really losing your normal friend, right?" Serena perked up, looking quizzical. "All that's happening is I know more about your life, which helps both of us, right?"

"...how?"

"Now that I know more about this, I know how important someone like me is to you. And that's something I couldn't be happier to have learned. Which is why I know how much I can help you by saying that, if you ever need someone to kick back and share a beer and an evening with, just give me a call. I'll always be there if you want a normal, monster-free evening."

There was a long moment of silence between them. Cars passed by every now and again, and pedestrians walked by less often. Nika was initially worried that someone might mess up their moment, but most people seemed to sense the emotions in the area and avoided interrupting.

Finally, Serena just breathed a quick chuckle. "You've been watching too many shitty romance movies."

"Doesn't make it any less true," Nika laughed back.

She laughed along, much more nervously, fidgeting for a few moments. Finally, she held out her arm in a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a hug-offering. "Normal friends?"

 _'Oh god...'_

 _'Do I go for the hug? Or the handshake? The hug might be too intimate and scare her off, but what if the handshake weirds her out and why is that gesture so ambiguous and YOU'RE HESITATING TOO LONG JUST PICK ONE!'_

She opted to compromise somewhat, going for a half-hug. "Normal friends."

Kyubey, that blessed little angel, decided to remain silent and let them have this moment.

The hug eventually ended, and the two of them separated. Though, they hovered around each other for a few moments, not entirely sure how to say goodbye just yet.

"See you Sunday then."

"See you then!"

Nika took the cue to head inside, withdrawing her keys and tapping them against the detector. The loud door-is-unlocked buzzer pulled her out of her stupor, enough to remind her to get the hell inside and shut the door.

With one last wave goodbye, they went their separate ways.

One short elevator ride later, and Nika found herself in her tiny apartment that never really felt so...empty before.

Almost mechanically, she deposited her purse and coat by the door and went about making herself a quick little snack. All that running for her life...kinda worked up an appetite.

She was all set to freak out over the running-for-her-life bit that she was probably still in shock over, but something else took precedent in her mind.

In two days, she'd be hanging out with Serena.

Admittedly, it wasn't a date, and there were others there, but it was still progress. And that alone made her stomach and heart all kinds of jittery.

"...what should I wear?"


	3. 3: Big Secret Buddies

**A/N: Man, it has been a while. I wholeheartedly apologize. Blame school. School is always to blame. -nervous laughter-**

 **Thankfully, now that I've graduated, there shouldn't be QUITE that much of a delay between chapters. So...on with the story!**

"So...lemme get this straight. Your friend who you have a crush on, and I use the term 'friend' very loosely here, has some big secret you found out about the night before last. A secret you refuse to tell me about, by the way, but 'kinda changes everything'. Direct quote, no less. And now, you're meeting her and her 'big secret buddies', and you absolutely refuse to let me tag along and meet this woman. That sum things up?"

"Just about. This look okay?"

Cerise turned her head just enough to critically analyze Annika's current outfit with her stern hazel eyes, before turning back to stare at the ceiling. "Too loud. Change the top to something off-white." While she set about that, she sat silently for a few moments, before finally stating, "Nika, sweetie, I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me honestly."

"O...kay..."

"Is your girlfriend a hooker?"

If Nika were drinking something, that'd be a spit-take right there. As it stood, she came pretty close. "N-No. No, most definitely not."

"Mafia member?"

"No. Now how does this-"

"Secretly a vampire?"

"NO! Now how about this top?"

She studied the blouse carefully, before offering a thumbs-up.

Nika looked over the outfit. "Really? Isn't it a bit too bright for this weather?"

"Which of us is the art student?"

"Art _history_ student."

"Bite me." The conversation lapsed into silence for a few moments. "Y'know, this advice thing kinda relies on me knowing something about the situation. Otherwise I'm just taking blind jabs."

"And I already told you, I'm not saying a word. She entrusted me with that secret, and I'm not going to breach that trust."

"Well fine, be that way." Cerise played with a few curls of blonde-and-bright-blue hair. "But even with me knowing fuckall about this lady, you want my advice?"

"Of course. That _is_ why I called you."

"Mmm." She gathered her words for a brief moment. "Don't take this the wrong way, hon, but I think you're projecting what you wanna see onto her."

"What!? That's not-"

"Hear me out, okay? Let's face facts, you're the type to get really obsessive when it comes to romance. And that means you want this to work really, really bad. Hell, you were just like this three years ago, and look how that turned out. But now...from what I hear, however biased it happens to be...it sounds like you want this to work so bad that you're ignoring any possibility where it doesn't work."

"...like what?"

"Like that night. She said you were special to her and that you were her only normal friend or something, right?"

"Yeah. An-"

"But have you ever considered that she was just trying to play damage control now that you were in on her big secret?"

"Wh—NO! No, she...she wouldn't do that! She's not that kind of person!"

Cerise stared hard at Nika, before finally returning her gaze to the ceiling. "Only you know that for sure, I guess. Still, it's not _im_ possible, which means you need to consider it when thinking about how she feels. And if nothing else, that night proves pretty well that you don't know her as well as you think you do. So you want my advice?"

"...sure."

Cerise smiled at her as Nika fidgeted with her clothes. "Take some time, don't make any advances on your own, and try to get a sense of how she _really_ feels about you. Consider every possibility, don't leave _anything_ out, and really think hard about all this. Once you can tell me for certain that you know how she feels, _and_ back it up with proof, then you can start moving forward. Okay?"

"...okay."

Cerise sat up on the bed, cross-legged in a butterfly pose with the kind of mastery only a yoga student could pull off. "Sweetie, I'm not trying to shoot you down here. I want your love life to work out almost as much as you do. But I also don't want you to get so lovestruck that you run into something that won't work. If you do, it'll only hurt so much worse later on, so better to get it over with now while this is still small. Okay?"

Nika processed that for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. Right. Just...take it slow and see how she feels. I can do that."

Cerise beamed her trademark big grin. "Atta girl! Now, when's the next bus coming?"

"Uhhh...hang on...twenty minutes."

"Good. Plenty of time. Go do makeup, and don't take too long."

"It's not like it'll take _that_ long. Geez..."

"Still, your lady's waiting! Chop chop!" Nika was playfully shoved out of her bedroom by Cerise's gentle kicks. "I'll be looking for your porn in the meantime."

"I don't have any porn!"

"Exactly what I'd expect a porn collector to say. Now hurry! Andale!"

Precisely fifteen minutes later, Nika was ready to go, and Cerise's porn-hunt had turned up nothing (though it was admittedly halfhearted). Mockingly acting like a mother seeing her child off to school, Cerise made a few final adjustments to Nika's outfit.

"Now, honey, if any strangers try to talk to you, blow on your whistle, okay?"

"It's scary how much you sound like my mother."

Cerise laughed, drawing more than a few stares. "Little do you know that I've been your mother _this whole time_!"

"I'm a year older than you!"

"Time travel, m'dear. I'm actually several centuries old, but I can look twenty-three because I come from the 51st century, where we have perfected the subtle art of plastic surgery! I had a small accident 24 years ago, and now I'm keeping an eye on my daughter for all of time!"

Trying her hardest to keep the small smile off her face (and failing miserably), Nika did her best to feign as much drama as humanly possible. "Oh the horror! Truly, I am cursed with the harshest of destinies! For you see, I...I'm horribly in love with you!"

"Oh, the tragedy!"

They held their straight faces for all of three seconds, before they burst out laughing and couldn't stop. Part of her wanted to be nervous about all the people giving them weird looks. But...damn it, Cerise's giggles just wouldn't let her stop laughing.

After a while, the two of them settled back down. Which let Cerise give Annika a nervous look. "You...you aren't actually in love with me, right? You were just joking?"

"Yeah, of course. Trust me, I went through that clusterfffff..." She briefly glanced to the seven-year-old giving her a wide-eyed stare. "...ffffudge...already. That whole _thing_ is over and done with."

"Okay, good. No offense, but you had me a little nervous there."

"Hah! Typical you, nervous over nothing."

" _Nothing?_ Hon, you were _there_ in the _thick_ of that mess! I nearly lost my best friend and my now-boyfriend in one fell swoop over that. You of all people should know that wasn't nothing."

The joking demeanor fell off of Nika like so much water. "I...sorry...I guess it's too soon to be joking about that, huh?"

"No. Not really. Just...it's still a little fresh in my mind, y'know? I don't wanna go back to things being awkward between us again."

"Yeah, that's fair. Sorry I brought it up."

When Annika was busy watching the bus stop at the traffic light not fifteen meters away, Cerise smiled down at her slightly and rubbed her head. "Anyone ever tell you that you apologize too much?"

"Actually, yeah. Serena told me that pretty recently." Nika swatted her hand away and set about fixing her now-ruined hair.

"Well, maybe she'll do you some good then." Her smirk turning malicious, she moved her hand away from Nika's and messed up a different part of her carefully-brushed hair.

She swatted that hand away, only for the blonde to shift her attack to an undefended area.

"Stop that! You're messing up my hair!"

"D'awwww, but youwe so kyoot when youw powting." She stuck her tongue out at Nika as their duel turned into a full-on slapfight.

"Oh, shove it, you little-"

Whatever half-baked insult was on the tip of her tongue was interrupted by the hissing/screeching noise of the bus' brakes. Probably for the best; the father of that seven-year-old was giving both of them the stink eye.

Through some weird arrangement of the lineup, Nika was last onto the bus, scrambling to pull her OCRA card out of her purse. As she did, Cerise gave her a little half-hug. "Call me when you get back home, okay? I'm still a little worried."

"Sure." Nika returned the little half-hug as everyone shuffled onto the bus. "Geez, you really _are_ like my mother," she muttered to herself as she broke off from the hug and hurried onto the bus.

"Have fun on your playdate, _kiddo_!" Cerise's borderline-manaical snickering chased Annika into the bus as the doors closed behind her. Nika wanted to respond, but decided that stalling the bus and leaning out its doors just to make a snarky comment would be really rude. So she found a seat near the back and set about fixing up her appearance.

That was about when things set in, and her nervousness only built on itself as the bus glided through the city.

She was about to meet with not only her crush, but all of her crush's closest friends.

All of whom casually fought horrific monsters on a daily basis, and could probably kill her in seconds.

At the very least, Cerise knew where she'd be. But the concept itself rattled her to the core.

The minutes dragged on and on, leaving Nika to alternate between fiddling with her bags, listening in on nearby conversations, and wallow in her own anxiety over the slowly-approaching situation. The low-rise apartments, storefronts, and warehouses slowly gave way to quaint little one-and-two story houses. Not many picket fences, though; most people settled for chain-link or just none at all. Annika simply stared out the window, watching it all go by, until finally, _finally_ , the bus' automatic voice announced their arrival at 45th Avenue S.

Annika pulled the cord with only seconds to spare (which earned her quite the dirty look from the driver) and half-staggered-half-ran down the bus to hop off the backdoor.

The bus pulled away with a loud roar, leaving Annika to stand awkwardly in its wake, checking on the directions she'd hastily printed out this morning.

"Um...are you Ms. Mara?"

Annika jumped at her name, quickly turning to face the stranger that'd approached her. She was probably in her mid-to-late-thirties, only slightly taller than Annika herself. Her thin, bright-blonde hair was cut really damn short, to the point where it almost resembled a buzz-cut, and her brilliant blue eyes seemed to smile effortlessly. She was almost unhealthily skinny, and flat-chested to the point of near-androgyny, but that was partially hidden by her thick green hoodie and slightly-baggy blue jeans.

"Uh..." Nika's mind blanked for a moment, then snapped back into place. "Yeah! Are you...?"

"Marianne Whittaker. One of Serena's friends. She said you'd be coming, and I didn't want you to get lost, so I decided to meet you here!"

"Oh. Nice to meet you! Sorry I'm a little early..."

"Oh, it's no problem. You're the first one here, besides me and Lauren of course. Shall we get going?" She gestured down a side street, and the two of them began walking through the labyrinthine suburbs.

Nika glanced over her hands, and there was a wedding ring, but she didn't see any sign of a little steel ring like Serena's.

"You're not allergic to dogs, are you?

"Huh? Oh, no. I am allergic to cats, though."

"Oh, good. So how did you meet Serena?"

"She...she comes into my work from time to time."

"Ahh. Makes sense."

"Are you...a Magical Girl?"

Marianne laughed, a quiet little chuckle partly hidden behind her hand. "Oh, no, but I'm flattered you think so."

"Oh. But then-"

"It's my daughter Lauren. She's the Magical Girl in the family. I found out about all this from her."

"And...how long has she been-"

"Just under a year."

"Okay. Right."

They continued on in silence, while Annika processed the new information. Serena, Lauren, and...didn't Serena mention there were three of them? That left one more that she had yet to meet.

 _'I wonder what they're like?'_

"You get used to all this after a while," Marianne offered.

"Huh?"

She laughed. "I recognized the look on your face from when I was in your shoes. You get used to it. Just give it a little while. But if you ever need a non-magical person to talk to about this kind of thing, just give me a call, okay?"

Marianne held out a business card, which Annika nervously took and stuffed into her pocket. "Thanks."

Marianne smiled, and Annika couldn't help but smile back.

"Well, here we are! Please, make yourself at home."

Nika glanced over the house they'd arrived at. It was your typical suburban two-story affair, with the front door up some stairs on the second floor. The numerous gardens were well-tended, though most plants weren't in bloom since it was mid-December. A few toys had made their way onto the front lawn, mostly frisbees, tennis balls, and a lone skateboard. It was utterly unassuming, and certainly not the kind of place Nika expected the defenders of humanity to hold a strategy meeting.

Then again...she had no idea what to expect period. So she mindlessly followed Marianne up the staircase.

"By the way," Marianne started, "you haven't met Kristina yet, have you?"

"Uh...I've met _a_ Kristina, but something tells me you mean someone else."

"Mmm. Kristina is the third Magical Girl of this city, so you'll meet her soon enough. But when you do...don't let her get on your nerves, okay? She says nasty things sometimes, but she means well."

"O...kay...thanks for the heads-up." _'Just who is Serena making friends with!?'_

And with that, Marianne nodded and opened the front door.

Only to be quickly assaulted by a golden retriever, nearly knocking her over.

"Aahaha! Hello again Rosemary."

"Arf arf!" "Rosemary" tried his hardest to jump up onto Marianne high enough to lick her face. He was small for a retriever, but his weight definitely wasn't inconsequential.

Marianne just withstood the barrage like a true pro and smiled. "I was only gone for ten minutes..."

From inside the house, a third voice called out, "Rosemary! Go bed! Stop trying to knock mom over!"

Rosemary casually ignored the command, instead realizing that Annika was standing just off to the side and charging for her instead. She was just lucky she didn't get knocked down the stairs.

"Ack! Um...hi! Hello! Can you stop that now!?"

Marianne laughed. "Relax, he's harmless. Just excitable is all."

"I don't know if I'd call this 'harmless'!" She tried to put her hands up to stop him, but all she got rewarded with were numerous slobbery licks to the palms.

A teenage girl leaned out from inside the house, grabbing at Rosemary's collar. She looked a helluva lot like her mother, except that she couldn't have been older than 18, her hair was a strawberry blonde and came down to her shoulder blades, and she had ten more pounds of muscle. Of course, Marianne was definitely on the side of "unhealthily thin", so that put the newcomer around average.

"Come _on_ , Rosemary! I know you're excited, but at least let them come in!"

"Arf arf!"

"Shush! Go bed!"

It was around then that Nika noticed the narrow steel ring, adorned with a simple dandelion-yellow gemstone in the middle, sitting on her left pinky.

 _'So this is Lauren, huh?'_ She didn't look magical; she just looked like any other middle-class teenager.

Having successfully wrangled the dog back indoors, Lauren brushed her hair back out of her face and turned back to the two humans present. "You okay mom? You're not hurt?"

"Oh, I'm fine. It'll take a lot more than Rosemary to put me out of commission."

"Okay. Just...wanted to make sure." Lauren finally turned to Nika and smiled, offering a hand to shake. "You must be Annika. Sorry about Rosemary; he gets really excited around strangers."

Nika just smiled, shaking the offered hand and trying not to think about how much dog slobber was on her hands. "It's fine. I've dealt with dogs before, I know how they are."

"Haha! Well, it's great to finally meet you." Lauren backed into the house, the only indication she even noticed the slobber-hands being a quick wipe of her hands on her jeans. "Come on in. You want anything to drink?"

"Uh...just water's fine."

Nika slipped her shoes off as she entered the household behind Marianne, taking it all in. Various photos adorned the walls, along with numerous unframed paintings of various flowers, landscapes, and gardens. On the right were a staircase leading down to the garage and a hallway leading to what was likely the bedrooms and bathrooms of the household. A dining room table, surrounded by six chairs (two of which did _not_ belong) calmly waited in the middle of the room for everyone to sit down, the flower-vase centerpiece relocated to the kitchen counter and replaced by numerous maps of the city. On the far side of the room, isolated by a peninsula of marble countertop, was a kitchen filled with the latest appliances from a decade ago. And next to the kitchen, almost hidden in the far-left corner of the room, was a door bearing a little handmade sign that said "Empty".

All in all, it was...well...nice. Nika was once again realizing that her expectations of a secret bunker hidden behind a dozen code-locked blast doors was kind of unrealistic.

Oh, and Rosemary. Rosemary had apparently decided that Annika was his new best friend that he must sniff at all times.

Annika simply watched Lauren as she stepped into the little kitchen to get Nika her glass of water. Marianne had taken a seat at the dining room table, almost looking like she was out of breath.

Lauren spotted the same out-of-breath look the minute she turned around. "Mom? You okay?"

"Don't fuss, kiddo." Marianne waved her hand, as if to emphasize the "not-fussing" part of that. "If you keep treating me like an old lady, I'll start going grey."

"Okay. Just...lemme know if you're not feeling okay."

"I will. Thanks for worrying."

Once Lauren walked up to Nika, Nika leaned over and quietly asked, "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Her cancer's gone, far as we can tell, but she's still recovering from the chemo."

"Ohhhhh. Okay. Makes sense."

Lauren smiled and passed the water glass to Nika. "The others should be here soon, so just make yourself at home."

Annika nodded and smiled. Lauren, apparently satisfied, returned to the kitchen to start making...sandwiches? Crackers and dip?

Okay, so snack food. Annika was secretly glad; if there wasn't much to eat that's substantial, she could always ask Serena to lunch after th- _'NO! No no no, that wouldn't work. Hang back and observe, remember?'_

Marianne and Lauren began idly chatting about homework and how completed it was, so Annika idly browsed the paintings and photos lining the walls of the room.

They were mostly watercolor, with a few acrylics in the mix, and always of landscapes or flowers or similar scenes. Annika couldn't see a single painting with animals in it, save a single watercolor depicting a pair of rabbits in the woods. After some careful study, she finally discerned that the signature read "M.L. Whittaker".

 _'Ah, so her mother's an artist. Not a bad one, either.'_

Mystery solved, Annika moved on to the pictures. Most of them were baby pictures of Lauren or two other boys that were likely her younger brothers. However, a wedding photo depicting a blonde young woman being bridal-carried by a (surprisingly handsome) man was prominently on display, and it took Nika a long time to recognize the blonde as Marianne, since her hair was significantly longer and her build much healthier.

There were a couple pictures of Lauren's brothers, one showing a dirty and roughed-up kid in a uniform with a soccer ball under one arm, giving the camera a massive grin and a thumbs-up. The other showed a boy who could almost be the spitting image of his brother, were it not for the fact that he was on stage, in costume, and posing dramatically with a sword.

Then there were pictures of Lauren, and for the life of her, Nika couldn't find a single picture of Lauren without her brothers in the frame. Then again, there were only three photos with her present at all. One of them showed a four-year-old Lauren sitting next to two infant boys and looking surprised about something (probably the camera), while the other showed a teenage Lauren holding her brothers in something between a hug and a headlock, an enormous grin on all their faces. Nika studied the picture carefully, but couldn't find that trademark steel ring.

The only other picture to show Lauren was a family photo. Marianne was in a wheelchair, completely bald and even thinner than she was now but otherwise healthy and happy. The man who was clearly her husband stood behind her, one hand protectively on her shoulder. The brothers stood on one side, smiling at the camera, while Lauren stood on the other.

Curious, Nika studied that picture carefully, squinting at it with her face nearly pressed up against the frame.

Sure enough, there it was. A small steel ring on her left pinky finger.

 _'So sometime between that other picture and this one, she made her contract. I wonder if—'_

"So where do you work?" Marianne asked, sipping at what looked like tea.

"Huh!? Oh…I…uh…just some Coffeebucks in Northwall. Nothing special, but it's all I can fit between classes."

"Classes?"

"Yeah, just…online stuff, really." Annika planted herself in one of the chairs at the table, setting her water down and idly glancing over the maps. "Nothing too special."

"What're you studying?" Lauren asked, setting out a bowl of tortilla chips.

"Bioethics, actually. Moral dilemmas in science, medicine, and engineering." Nika laughed. "Kind of a weird major, but—"

"No, that sounds fascinating!" Lauren was smiling excitedly as she spoke. "I'm planning on getting into medicine when I finally get to college, so something like that is right up my alley."

"Oh, a future doctor, huh?" Nika smiled. "Maybe I'll see you out in the professional world someday."

"Yes, then you can tell her why she should use regular medicine instead of healing magic."

"Moooom!"

Marianne shrugged, chuckling behind one hand. "I'm simply saying, you can't use your alien magic powers to take care of some child's runny nose. It's just wasteful."

Lauren grumbled something about "knowing that already" as she set out a couple containers of dip. Annika's mind, however, was reeling slightly.

"What do you mean, 'healing magic'? Isn't it all just magic?"

Lauren sighed slightly, but smiled anyway. "Yes and no. Sure, it's all just magic, but what kind of magic you're best at depends entirely on who you are and what you wished for. Me, I wished to heal someone, so my ability to heal people's injuries with magic is better than most magical girls. We can still learn other forms of magic, the same way you can 'learn' to be a different person, but you'll always be good at what you started with."

Annika nodded, adding that to the fast-growing list of things to try and figure out at some point in her life. "So, if I were to wish for infinite money…?"

"That would qualify as Bounty magic, which means you'd probably be best at making objects with your magic. Even so, though, it depends on what kind of person you are as well, so no one could really tell you exactly what you'd be capable of."

Annika nodded again. _'So it's a grab bag of sorts? That certainly makes things interesting. I wonder what Serena would qualify as…?'_

Marianne smiled. "You're certainly taking all this information well. I was a confused mess when I first heard about it."

"It's true. She asked me what a Wraith was no less than seven times."

"I mean…it's not that I'm not confused, I'm just…trying to take everything in stride, y'know? This is all completely new to me, so…the best way to make it make sense is to just take things as they are. Does that make sense?"

Marianne nodded. "I must say, that's quite a mature way of looking at it."

"Oh don't get me wrong, I'll still probably end up going crazy thinking about this too much. Just…that'll come later."

They both laughed. Lauren looked like she was about to say something, when the sound of a revving engine came from the front of the house. Rosemary immediately woke from his idle wandering and bounded up to the front door, tail wagging like a pinwheel.

"Sounds like Kris and Serena."

"They came together?"

"They always do. Serena doesn't have a car, so Kris drives her out here."

Three sharp knocks came from the door, and Rosemary went over the moon with excitement, barking and pawing and jumping at the door.

"It's open!"

Without further ado, the door swung open, leaving gloriously-beautiful Serena to get assaulted by the canine menace known as Rosemary.

"Oof! Hey, buddy! You miss me?"

Rosemary looked like he was trying to bark, jump, and lick, all at the same time. And to Nika's shock (and abject horror), he succeeded in landing a slobbery lick on her chin.

"Ohhh…okay then, bud. Sit! No, sit! SIT!" Finally managing to push the excited Rosemary off of her to walk into the actual house. Rosemary then abandoned her for someone else just out of sight, presumably Kristina, leaving Serena to greet the rest of the group.

It was only then that Serena noticed Nika sitting at the table. "Hey, Annie! You found the place after all!"

"Yeah…I actually made it."

"Well, welcome to the group! I take it you've met these two," Lauren and Marianne nodded, "and this is Kris, my best friend and Magical Girl extraordinaire."

Kris finally managed to step into the house and slam the door shut behind her. And it was only then that Annika finally got a good look at the third Magical Girl of this city.

And just like that, every thought in her brain cut short.

Kristina was obviously a biker girl of some kind, as evidenced by the black leather biker jacket and boots. The rest of her outfit consisted of shredded jeans and a white tank-top decorated with the logo of some obscure metal band. Her brown hair was short and ruffled, covered up by a pageboy cap tilted at a slightly-jaunty angle. Her skin was blindingly pale, only broken up by sparse freckles and bright green eyes.

But to Nika, all of that paled in comparison to the fact that _she was a GODDAMN KID_!

Her features were almost baby-esque, and even with some people sitting, she was obviously the shortest person in the house. Her height, her build, the slight traces of acne…she couldn't have been older than 15! At _best_!

That, of course, didn't stop her from carrying herself like she owned the place, and meeting Annika's bewildered stare with her own inner fire.

"This is that one chick you mentioned?" Kristina asked Serena, never once breaking that piercing stare that burned into Annika's soul.

Serena smiled on, oblivious to the apparent emotional whirlwind in the room. "That's her! Kris, meet Annie! Annie, Kris!"

Annika only waved lightly, still not sure how to process what she was seeing.

Kris only shrugged off her jacket and casually commented, "You have some pretty shit taste in women, Blue."

…and just like that, Nika found herself overwhelmed with the urge to punch small children.

Serena, for her part, simply smiled it off and went about removing her shoes.

Marianne's smile remained unbroken (to Nika's astonishment) as she commented, "Kristina, I know you have different views on authority, but I'd ask that you not swear in my house."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Kristina kicked off her boots and casually threw her jacket on top of them, before stretching as she walked toward the table. "You guys got any beer?"

Nika's mind just kept right on breaking as she stared at the proto-delinquent.

Marianne simply shook her head, eyes closing in what had to have been frustration. "No alcohol either, please."

With a soft groan, Kristina crashed into one of the chairs (opposite Annika) and propped her feet up into another. "Tch. Buzzkill. Just whatever you've got that's fizzy then."

Lauren just nodded and smiled along. "Serena?"

"Uh…water's fine for now, thanks."

Lauren grabbed the drinks, while Annika simply stared at the tiny magical girl and questioned everything she knew about culture and the existence of mankind. Who did this girl think she was to boss people around like that!? And why was she getting away with it!? How did she actually work with these people!? How did perfectly nice and pleasant people like Lauren and Serena work with _her_!?

Kris glared back at Nika for a second or two, before growling, "Hey Blue, slap your girlfriend's face really quick. I think it's broken."

Annie felt like she was staring at the cultural equivalent of a hypercube; capable of comprehending the individual components but utterly unable to wrap her mind around the sum of those components. A punk-attitude biker-chick, she could understand. A pre-pubescent teenage magical warrior…disconcerting, but at least she could comprehend its existence. Put them together, though, and Nika's fundamental understanding of the universe began to fall apart.

Serena took the seat next to Annika. "She's not my girlfriend, and I'm not hitting her. She's just not used to this stuff, so go easy on her, Kris." Serena then turned to Annika. "Seriously, though, Annie, you're staring."

"S-Sorry, I just…Kristina, how—"

"It's _Kris_ , thank you not at all."

"How old are you?"

The drinks arrived at the table, and Lauren with them. Kris snatched her soda can from Lauren's hand, while Serena silently smiled her thanks.

Kris popped the top of the can. "Fifty-something, I think? The years kinda blur together after a while."

And just like that, the hypercube opened up to welcome her into a whole new reality where color was sound, time flowed upside-down, and reality existed in infinitely-recursive quilt-patterns. Science was dead, meaning had no meaning, and her mind was so broken that she couldn't even think up any other analogies.

At the very least, Lauren seemed to grasp the awkwardness around the table. "Maybe…we should get the meeting started? I caught forty-three Wraith Cubes and two Nightmare Cubes."

"Uh…seventy-one Wraith Cubes and one Nightmare Cube," Serena offered, only now starting to understand that Nika and Kris weren't getting along like she'd hoped.

Kris took a long swig of…whatever that soda was, before grunting, "one-hundred-and-eight Wraith Cubes and seven Nightmare Cubes."

The broken reality in Annika's head twisted and warped until it only existed on a singular Mobius Strip made of fruit Roll-ups and fucking rainbows. Not only did she look like a tweenager, not only was she fifty-something, but now she was also the top-performing Magical Girl in this group!? In retrospect, she obviously wished for eternal youth or something similar, but still, Annika was having a hard time wrapping her head around the tiny magical warrior sitting across from her.

"Okay…where did we find them all? I found mine in the Harbor Warehouses and a school in Greenwood District." Lauren…once again the peacekeeper as she marked the city map with green X's.

"North Factory Hill, right here." Serena pointed to a spot on the map, which Lauren dutifully marked.

"Three in this part of Factory Hill, one in Little China, two in Westpeak, and one in the Harbor." Kris pointed to spots, which Lauren once again marked without fail. Thankfully, the map gave Annika an excuse to focus on something… _anything_ …other than Kristina.

The map was marked with dozens of X's of varying colors, which a quick glance at the legend displayed as different two-week periods. But it also displayed a thick black outline of a large portion of the city, with a few suburbs included and districts missing. Since the X's were isolated to the region contained by that outline, it was a fair assumption that the outline was the extent of their turf. And the other lines stretching away marked the turfs of…other magical girls? Presumably, but she couldn't ask and confirm without looking stupid. So she sat silent and studied the patterns in the X's.

Lauren voiced Nika's thoughts for her. "Looks like the hotspots for the Harbor and the North Factory Hill are starting to migrate towards the Business District. That _can't_ be good."

"I'd like to know why there are so many at all," Kristina commented. "Used to be that I was lucky to find two Nightmares, now I'm bumping into them every other block."

"And they're definitely focused on those hotspots, which I _really_ don't like. We might end up having to hunt in pairs."

"You think our neighbors are causing it?" Serena offered. "The nearest borders to those hotspots are the Twins and Evelynn, so maybe they're chasing Nightmares into our turf. Try and pick us off without declaring war."

Annika wasn't sure which was more surprising to her about that comment; the steel edge to Serena's voice, or the fact that she genuinely believed that could happen. Then again…today had just been full of surprises, so what were a few more?

Kristina tapped her soda can on the table to get Serena's attention. "Not likely. The Twins might try something like that, but Purple wouldn't give up prey. No, it's something else."

Lauren tapped the map as Marianne left the table for…something. Probably the bathroom.

"I checked online," Lauren started, "and everyone commented that activity like this is really unusual. There's no way we're _that_ much of a hotspot, when we're almost as ripe as LA or Detroit."

"Get any offers for assistance?" Serena asked.

Lauren shook her head. "Not from anyone trustworthy. Just rookies in the countryside looking for good hunting."

"Good. Keep 'em out. The last thing we need is vultures making things more complicated."

"Agreed."

Lauren let out a long, exasperated sigh. "Okay…we can start focusing our efforts on the hotspots, try and make sure they don't meet or reach the Business District. Either option makes our lives a _lot_ more complicated. Serena…you and I probably shouldn't be hunting alone, not in those areas. We'll share a shift here and there, try and focus these hotspots down."

"Right." "Whatever."

"As for our neighbors…we should talk to Evelynn and the Twins, see if they're having a similar issue. If they are, then that _really_ makes me nervous, since they'd be congregating on our turf. Not sure I like that possibility."

"Awesome." Kristina's face lit up with a vicious grin as she finally stopped reclining. "And in the meantime, I'll show that little—"

" _I'll_ talk to Evelynn."

"Wh-what the fuck!? You can't just blueball me like this!"

Lauren sighed. "Yes, I _can_ , because I don't want our diplomatic attempts to end in an all-out war. You and Serena should go talk to the Twins whenever you have an opening together."

Kris groaned, and…was she actually pouting? Was Kristina even capable of deciding if she was trying to be an adult or a whiny kid!? Finally, Kris muttered, "Killjoy," and buried her frown in her can of soda.

Lauren briefly rubbed her temples as she studied the map. "Okay…for the next couple weeks, I think we should focus our efforts here, here, and here. Kris, you can handle yourself, but Serena, what's your schedule look like?"

"Well—"

"Hang on, hang on," Kristina interrupted, waving her hand to emphasize that Lauren and Serena should shut up and listen, "before we get into the nitty-gritty, I wanna know what the fuck _she's_ doing here." Kris pointed an accusatory finger in Annika's direction. "I was under the impression that this was a private clubhouse, _cael y pwynt_?"

"Huh?" Nika jumped slightly once she realized she was rejoining the discussion (and as an object of scrutiny, no less!). "I…something about…perception?"

Serena nodded and began elaborating. "She wound up following me into a labyrinth, and according to Kyubey, now she can see wraiths and stuff. She shouldn't be able to, but she is, and we don't know why. So Kyubey wants to test the extent of her abilities, which means she's supposed to join us on some minor hunts."

"Minor?" Lauren asked. "How minor?"

"Just wraiths and stuff. No Nightmares."

Lauren sighed, while Kristina simply scrutinized Nika unblinkingly ( _'do Magical Girls even need to blink?'_ ). "And of course, this would happen right now." The stress and worry seemed to fall off of Lauren's face, even if she was probably just forcing on a smile. "We'll try and fit you in where we can, Ms. Mara, but…I'm sure you understand if that'll be difficult."

"Oh, it's…it's no problem. I don't wanna mess up your work, especially considering what's at stake."

"Well, we appreciate it. What's your schedule look like?" Lauren pulled a notebook and pen from the stacks of paper on the table. "We'll all just lay our schedules on the table and see what works."

"Really quick…" again with that piercing stare from Kris. "…you followed Serena into a labyrinth?"

"I—I didn't know what it was then! If I had, I'd probably've run the other direction and never stopped!"

Kris snorted something that was trying to be a chuckle. "Well, at least you're not as dumb as you look, Blondie."

Nika's face twisted into something between shock and fury, and she had to seriously fight the urge to punch this bratty little twit right in her smug fucking grin. Thankfully, Lauren distracted her with a hasty comment of, "Oookay, why don't we just get our schedules down on paper and we'll work things out from there? Ms. Mara, why don't you go first!?"

It took a little convincing, but Annika finally ended up writing down her schedule for the coming two weeks. Though to be fair, they were only looking for her openings, when she wasn't working, in class, or sleeping. The schedule was passed around the table, and before long, everyone had written down their hours of availability. Which left Lauren struggling to put together a schedule while Serena and Annika noticed something on the map.

"Hey Annie…where's your apartment again?"

"Twenty-fifth and Markson."

"That's right here, right?"

"Yeah, why?"

Serena went suspiciously silent. Lauren was still busy with the schedule, and Kristina looked as disinterested as humanly possible. Marianne was doing something that looked like cooking in the kitchen, while Annika still struggled to understand what Serena had spotted.

Then she located her apartment on the map. And noted its incredible proximity to the mass of X's.

Realization shocked through her system, followed immediately by terror. "Y-You've gotta be shitting me!"

"Language, please."

"Sorry, Marianne."

"Seriously…you're _right_ in the path of that hotspot…"

"Well, more incentive to fight better. Right, Blue?"

Serena groaned at the sudden pressure to perform.

Marianne peered carefully at the map from the kitchen. "Well Annika, if things get really bad, you can always stay here for a few days. Is that alright?"

"I…I mean…my classes are online, sure, but I work all the way in Northwall…"

"She could always learn to fight." When the disbelieving silence settled in for a second or two, Kris continued. "I mean, she won't kill anything, but if she can see 'em, she can slap 'em around a bit, show a wraith or two who's boss."

"Who says I won't be killing them!?"

Serena gently gestured for Nika to calm down a little. "Normal weapons can't really kill Miasmal stuff. Just…dissuade it, I guess. And even that's pretty tough, improved perception or otherwise."

Kris simply shrugged and resumed idly juggling her empty soda can. "Just saying, it's an option."

"We'll consider it. In other news, I think I finally have a schedule down. This work for everyone?"

The magical girls gathered around Lauren's notebook, which was filled to the brim with hastily-scrawled numbers and letters.

"Oof. That's a lot of shifts."

"Well, there's a lot of hunting to be done."

"Who needs sleep anyway, am I right Blue?"

"Hell yeah! Here's to a week of all-nighters!" Serena and Kris shared a fistbump, both smirking.

"…I can't tell if you're being serious or not."

"Oh, trust me, they are," Lauren groaned, rubbing her temples.

"Magical Girls don't need sleep?"

"Technically not. Sleep, food, water, oxygen…they're all useful, but not really essential. It's how I get all my homework done and still have hunting shifts. Frustrating to go without, though," she muttered, in a way that implied she'd be sorely missing her bed for the next few weeks.

"I…okay…"

Serena and Kris began chatting about when and how they would meet the Twins (whoever those were…), while Lauren rubbed the stress off her face and smiled up at Annika. "In any case, your first hunt-shadow is 3pm on Wednesday. Think you can make it here by then?"

"Of course. I might show up a little earlier, actually, if that's alright with you…"

Marianne smiled at Nika, leaning around Serena to do so. "Just show up whenever you'd like. I'll be here all day."

"Alright then…"

Dates and times formally set, the group chit-chatted briefly before Kris casually grabbed her things and walked out without more than a "later, dorks." And one look out the window informed Nika that Kris rode a motorcycle without a helmet. Because of course she did, that crazy little bitch…

It wasn't long after that that Serena and Annika had to leave. Marianne offered to let them stay for dinner, but Annika declined since she had work early the next morning, and Serena didn't want her going home alone.

So it was that the two of them waited for the bus in the late afternoon, the near-winter weather nipping at whatever bare skin they were showing. Of which Nika was showing a substantial amount, considering her blouse was a lot thinner than it should have been.

 _'Damn you Cerise,'_ she cursed internally. _'If I get a cold, I'm sneezing all over you.'_

"So what'd you think? Of the group?" Serena may have acted cool, but even Annika could hear the slight tremor in her voice.

"Lauren's really nice. Kristina's just…kind of…"

"Intense?"

"…yeah, let's go with that."

Serena sighed, her breath letting out a thin trail of steam. "Sorry about that. She just doesn't like new people. Once she warms up to you, she's pretty great."

"I'll…take your word for it, I guess."

Serena nodded, then reached into one pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Right before she realized she had company, and asked, "You don't mind, do you?"

"I…guess not. Just stay downwind, okay?"

She chuckled, her voice suddenly sounding less like the acoustic embodiment of velvet and more just…raspy and tomboyish. "Sorry, I just…I kinda find it relaxing, I guess. Besides, it's not like I have to worry about lung cancer."

"Well, I do. So…like I said…downwind."

"Right. Yeah." She was about to strike the lighter, before pausing, and then putting everything away back into her pocket. "Nevermind."

"No no, don't let me get in your way!"

"You're not, don't worry. I just don't wanna upset you, so I'll wait until later."

"Really, it's perfectly fine."

"Well, I'm glad you think so. But I changed my mind, and that's final." She patted the pocket containing the cigarette pack with a small smirk. "And there's nothing you can say to convince me otherwise."

"R-right then. I guess."

The two delved right back into awkward silence. _'Dammit, why couldn't the bus get here already!? This was quickly turning unpleasant, and Nika does_ not _like that!'_

Then she remembered a question from earlier, and decided to go for it. "So…earlier, I was talking with Lauren, and she brought up something about different types of magic."

Serena smirked. "Figures she would. She was always a fan of the technical stuff."

"Yeah, it…seemed that way. Anyway, she commented that she got Healing Magic from her wish, but that got me wondering—"

"Wondering what me and Kris have?"

"I…yeah…" it took a surprising amount of effort not to correct Serena on her grammatical error.

Serena laughed, and no matter how short-lived the laugh was, it was downright beautiful. "Who knows, and who cares? Kris is Kris, Lauren is Lauren, and beyond that, I don't care. Besides, I shouldn't be sharing their wishes with you. It's kind of a Magical Girl faux pas."

"Well, I know that Kristina wished for some kind of eternal youth, and Lauren probably wished to cure her mom's cancer."

"Heh…nothing gets by you, does it?"

"When you meet my family, you'll start to see why."

"'When'?"

Nika blushed. "If. I meant 'if'. That's what I meant."

Serena simply chuckled and playfully elbowed Nika's arm. "Relax, Annie. I'm just teasing."

"Right. Sorry."

"Don't be." Serena sighed. "And don't tell the other two I said this, but you're almost right. In both cases. You're just missing some details, but otherwise, you're right on the money." Serena playfully rubbed Annika's head, leaving her blushing at the sudden forward-ness of the contact. "Good work, Sherlock."

While Annika silently thanked the fading light for concealing her furious blush, she realized something. "What about you?"

"Huh?"

"You never told me what your magic is. Or what your wish was."

"Oh…right." Serena began to deflate, losing her usual tomboyish charm, and Nika instantly regretted asking.

"Look, you don't have to tell me if you don't—"

"No, you…you deserve to…" Serena's voice trailed off, and she pretended to look for the bus in order to avoid Annika's gaze. Finally, she sighed and stared at the curb ahead of her with a thousand-yard stare. "Listen, Annie, if you really are getting wrapped up in all the Magical Girl politics…you're gonna hear a lot of nasty things about me. About people like me."

"People like…you mean your magic type?"

"Yeah. To put it lightly, getting the type of magic I have isn't easy, or fun, or agreeable. It's not something people really appreciate, or…understand. At least, the people who don't have it. So you…you might hear some stuff about me that isn't very pretty. That's why you deserve to hear the truth from me, right now."

Nika did her best not to look impatient while she waited for Serena to continue. The silence dragged on for almost a minute, before finally, Annika broke it.

"You still haven't told me what kind of magic it _is_. What it does."

"Right, sorry. It's…it's Destruction Magic. It specializes in breaking down defenses…things like barriers, shields, armors, restraints…anything like that."

"Why would anyone be upset about that? That sounds incredibly useful."

"Magical Girls don't hate it because of what it can _do_ , they hate it because of how you _get_ it." Serena glanced toward distant headlights, which looked suspiciously like the approaching bus. "On some level, it's personality and whatnot, but to get it from your wish, you have to wish for something to be _removed_ from the world. For it to disappear…to…."

…she didn't need to finish that sentence.

In that moment alone, millions of theories ran through Nika's mind. Millions of assumptions and pedestals about her beloved Serena came crashing to the ground.

"Look, you have to understand, I had a really good reason! They were absolute monsters, I was fifteen, I didn't see any other way out…if you were in my shoes, you would've done the same—"

"Serena…what…who did you…remove?"

She deflated even further, only going about the motions of pulling her wallet from a pocket because the mechanical parts of her mind demanded it. She spoke in a quiet, emotionless, almost imperceptible voice that was nearly drowned out by the approaching bus.

"My parents," she whispered as the bus pulled up.

"I made my wish, and then...they died."


	4. 4: The Heart of the Matter

A/N: Man, it's been a while since I could start writing again. So sorry about the massive delay on this one (as well as the insane size of it). But between work, school, and two moves in rapid succession...my life was kind of a mess for a while, and I needed to take some time to sort it all out.

But now that that's all (mostly) over, enjoy your romantic dramedy!

* * *

 **Chapter 4: The Heart of the Matter**

The two of them spent the rest of the bus ride in silence. Serena was too nervous to bring up that topic on a populated bus, and Nika's mind was reeling too much to bother asking questions.

That didn't stop her mind from running in circles with those questions, though. Questions like what on _earth_ could possibly drive someone to murder their own _parents_!?

 _'No, no no no, she didn't_ murder _them. She just said she wished them out of existence, right? She just made them disappear, right? No, she said that she made her wish and then they died! God dammit, that could mean ANYTHING! Did she wish that they would die!? Did she become a Magical Girl and then butcher them!? Did I accidentally end up in love with a psychotic murder, and why did she have to be so vague and was I just defending her because of Stockholm Syndrome or something and WHY WASN'T SHE SAYING ANYTHING!?'_

The questions were utterly overwhelming, leaving Annika too paralyzed with emotion to bother asking. And Serena would never bother answering, not here, not with people around. So the two of them simply shared a pair of bus seats and did their best to pretend the other didn't exist.

It got to the point that Annika nearly jumped out of her skin when Serena tapped her shoulder.

Serena simply gestured to the door, which was quickly opening. "This is your stop."

Nika nodded, and hastily stepped off the bus. She did not, however, expect Serena to follow her off.

"Wh-what are you-?"

"Oh, I…I need a different bus."

"Of course. Right. Well, I'll—"

"Annie…"

Silence settled between the two of them. A pregnant silence, where both had so much they wanted to say, but neither was brave enough to speak up first.

Finally, Serena broke the silence. "Annie, about what I said…you have to understand—"

"Understand _what_ , exactly!?" Anika actually surprised herself with the outburst, but the surprise didn't last long. She'd opened the floodgates, and now there was no stopping herself. "Understand that you…you _erased_ them! Erased your _family_!? That's not funny, that's serious stuff! And you expect me to just shrug it off and laugh it away!? Crack open a beer and pretend that you're not a _murderer_!? HELL no!"

"Not so loud!" Serena winced at the volume the conversation had reached, glancing around for anyone in earshot. "Look, they were monsters! How do you think I got this scar!? They were going to sell me on the _black market_! And the _one_ time I told the cops about it, I nearly _died_! Then Kyubey shows up and tells me I can get out of it with one stupid contract? What was I _supposed_ to do!?"

"And that makes it _better_!? Serena, you could've wished for a better family! You could've wished that they love you, or that you lived with someone else, or that they…turned into squirrels or some shit! There were a _million_ different options that didn't involve people _dying_!"

"Augh! Okay, yes, I get it, I was a stupid kid, okay? I was a stupid kid who did stupid things and made a stupid decision! Please, just…try to understand, okay? Try to understand where I'm coming from on this!"

Annika couldn't bring herself to look at the other woman anymore. She turned away, torn between her desire to run for it and her desire to help her friend.

"Annie…please, you have to understand! This is why I didn't want to tell you, okay? I was scared. I was scared you'd have this exact reaction, but I didn't want you hearing it from Evelynn or the Queen or someone and jumping to conclusions, but please, I'm sorry I told you!"

"You really shouldn't have."

"…Annie, please, try to understand—"

"Serena, I…" Nika took a deep breath, trying to sort out her feelings enough to speak. Finally, she settled on a few words.

"I need some time. To process this."

"Annie, I—"

"Just go home, Serena."

Serena went deathly quiet. Not that Annika cared. She turned and strolled into her apartment building, struggling with the elevator buttons that she could barely make out with her blurry vision. Why was her vision blurry again?

Pressing a finger against her eye made it come back soaked in salty liquid.

Tears.

She was crying.

Great. Fucking perfect.

She stumbled out of the elevator and carefully made her way down the hall. Unlocking the door was a fucking _ordeal_ , but she managed.

Now home, home safe in her cozy apartment where nothing could hurt her, she locked the door behind her and staggered to her bed, shedding accessories and jewelry and clothing the whole way.

Once she landed on her bed, she cried.

How long was she crying for? Minutes? Hours? Days?

Who cared?

What was she even crying into? Her pillow? Her blanket?

Who cared!?

What was she even crying over? Some unrequited love affair with a girl who was out of her league and turned out to be a parricidal psycho!?

 _'Who cares who CARES WHO_ _ **CARES**_ _!?'_

A loud buzzing noise from the floor of her apartment distracted her from her mental freakout. She knew what it was. It was her stupid phone, and it was probably stupid crazy Serena trying to do some stupid romcom bullshit to get them back together.

So she ignored it, wrapped her pillow around her ears, and kept crying angrily to…who, exactly? Herself? Serena? The world?

Did it even matter?

The phone went off again.

And again.

And again.

It was the fifth time it went off that she angrily sat up, pillow at the ready, only to come face to non-face with a white-robed figure. Grinning down at her with pointed teeth, elongated clawed hands extending from under its robe.

Annika simply stared at it.

And where before she'd felt terror at its presence, now she only felt raw fury.

"NO!" she screamed, driving her fist directly into the mass of static that covered its eyes. It felt incredibly bizarre, like punching solidified air, but she didn't care. It winced, and that was enough for Nika.

"I! AM! _DONE_!" Punctuating each syllable with another punch, she managed to drive it away from her bed, enough to reveal a perfect opportunistic weapon, lying where she'd discarded it on the floor.

It grabbed onto her wrist with a vicelike grip, grinning madly, but she didn't care. She scooped up her purse and slammed the accessory up across its non-face.

"I AM _SICK_! AND _TIRED_! AND _DONE_! _WITH_! _YOUR_! _SHIT_!" Each syllable was accompanied by another strike from the purse, forcing it to let go of her arm and flee the bedroom entirely. Annika chased it the whole way, spotting yet another improvised weapon sitting on her stove where she'd left it from this morning's breakfast.

She threw the purse into its face, leaving it to backpedal (or whatever the Wraith equivalent was) as she snatched the frying pan off her stove.

"SO _GET_! _OUT_! AND _LEAVE_! _ME_! _**ALONE**_!" Yet more strikes and swings, this time with the frying pan smacking the wraith in a way that felt incorporeal and yet…impactful.

The Wraith fled the apartment entirely through a wall, apparently deciding that whatever miasma Nika was producing wasn't worth the risk.

That left Annika Mara to simply stand in her apartment's miniscule living room, glaring at a patch of wall as she panted and gasped for air.

Finally satisfied that the monster had left her for good, she turned to return to her bed and her moping. Except…

Nika hefted the frying pan. _'Just in case…'_

In the end, she crashed onto her bed and curled up in her blankets and pillows, hiding from the crushing weight that sat on top of her soul and ignoring yet more buzzing from her stupid useless disgusting little phone.

The weirdest part was, she didn't even feel sad, or angry, or upset, or anything.

She didn't know _what_ to feel.

Everything she'd seen and heard and come to understand today…all of it was so far outside her realm of understanding that her brain couldn't even decide on an emotion for massive revelations like this.

The one thing she knew she felt was tired.

So she curled up around her pillows and frying pan and told herself she'd keep an eye open for any more monsters.

* * *

"…nika? Nika, you okay?"

Nika woke up groggily, then jumped to wakefulness when she saw a human silhouette over her bed. Reacting more than thinking, she brought her frying pan to bear—

The silhouette stopped the frying pan with a simple forearm to her wrists. "Nika, honey, calm down, okay? It's just me."

Annika blinked. The silhouette was starting to get more defined, especially the hair. Wraiths don't have hair, nor would it be bright blonde with light blue tips…

She blinked again. "Cerise…?"

"Yeah, it's me, sweetie. You okay?"

"How'd—" her voice was so choked up, it was hard for Nika to talk. "How'd you get in?"

"Don had a key. He's in the kitchen making you some hot cocoa, okay? You weren't answering any of my texts, so I got worried and came to check on you."

It was only now that Nika's frying pan returned to its place atop the blankets. "That…that was you?"

"Yeah, dingus, who else would it be?"

"I thought…"

Cerise comfortingly rubbed Annika's cheek. "Just relax, okay hon? Just breathe, sit up straight, and we can talk about the rest from there. Okay?"

"O-Okay…" with a little help from Cerise, Nika managed to sit up against the wall of her bedroom. After a few quick adjustments, mostly with her pillow and frying pan, she was comfortable and awake enough to take her phone from Cerise and check it.

11:37 pm. Ouch. She'd be feeling this tomorrow.

Eight new texts. All from Cerise. All variants on the idea of "are you dead or what?"

Three missed calls: two from Cerise, one from her neighbor.

She set her phone onto her nightstand. "My neighbors…"

"Yeah…apparently, you were yelling a bit. Something about getting out of your home."

"Yeah…I'll have to apologize to them tomorrow."

Cerise raised one eyebrow, like she sensed there was more to that comment. "Is that why the frying pan?"

"Yeah. Sorry for almost bashing you with it."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Don snarked as he entered, bearing two mugs of hot cocoa.

"Thanks, hon," Cerise whispered to him as he passed a mug to Annika.

"Anytime."

Don took a seat at the foot of her bed, sipping at the second mug of cocoa, while Cerise took to sitting cross-legged by her nightstand. Both of them simply stared at her, their faces somewhere between imploring and expectant.

"I'm…gonna take it this is about that mystery girl of yours."

"…yeah. Serena."

They didn't press or pry. They simply waited as she stared into her cocoa.

Nika sighed. "I…what…what would you do if someone you loved…if they told you they did something awful? Like, they felt horrible about it, and it was for the right reasons, but it was still a horrible thing and now you're not sure if you can ever trust them not to do it again. B-but you want to! Because you love her, but at the same time, every part of you is telling you you shouldn't, and you should just turn and run because that's the smart thing to do and—"

"Annika…" Don glanced nervously at Cerise before continuing. "She didn't…do anything to hurt you…right?"

"Huh? N-No, she did that…thing before me. But she told me about it and now I can't let it go and every time I think about her it all gets wrapped up with these horrible things she did and _damn it I just want to forget about her_!"

"Is this a 'big secret buddies' thing?"

"Kind of…? I mean…it's only tangentially related, but…" Annika curled up and hugged her legs. "…it's still a pretty big secret."

"Can you at least tell us about it?"

"I…I guess so, but I don't know if I should! It's such a big deal, and she doesn't want anyone to think of her like that, and I don't want to betray her trust or make her hate me-!"

Cerise stopped her growing rambling with a finger to Nika's lips. "Hush. Just…tell us, okay? We'll take full responsibility, and this is clearly eating away at you, so just…you can say it, okay hon?"

Annika nodded, prompting Cerise to move her hands.

It still took Nika several long seconds to find the right words, though.

"So…she…we got to talking about our pasts, and…big secret buddy things…and the topic came up about our parents. And when I asked her about hers, she got all quiet. And then she started saying that if I was getting caught up in the whole…big secret thing…that I was gonna hear a lot of awful things about her, and it was better if she told me the truth now rather than someone else…giving me the wrong impression, I guess?"

Annika fell silent, simply taking a long sip of her cocoa and trying to figure out how to phrase this kindly.

"And…what was the truth?" Oh Don…ever the pragmatist.

It took a long time for Annika to speak. And when she did, it was nearly a whisper that gave her deja-vu of the moment she herself had heard this particular detail.

"She…she killed her parents, Don. She didn't go into detail, and she didn't say that she did it herself, but she said really clearly that she was directly responsible for it."

A long silence settled over the three of them.

"Did she say why?"

"Yeah…apparently, they were really abusive and horrible and tried to sell her or something. But…but that shouldn't excuse killing people! Especially your parents!"

Cerise hadn't said a word, her face unreadable and concealed by shadows. Don simply closed his eyes. "Nika…not everyone's parents are like yours, okay? Sometimes people are monsters, and those monsters deserve punishment. You're right that murder isn't right, even in situations like that…but…at least…I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should see things from her perspective and understand why she did it."

"I—I do!" Great, Nika's eyes were watering up again. "But…then what!? Am I supposed to just forgive her for it!? Because I don't! I can't!"

Don simply shrugged. "I…I honestly can't tell you that, Nika. You're gonna have to figure it out on your own. But I want you to know that we'll help you out any way we can. Right, Cerise?"

Cerise simply nodded, her face an unreadably-neutral expression.

Don reached over and patter her shoulder. "We'll check in on you tomorrow. But if you need anything at all, don't hesitate to call. Okay?"

The two of them stood to start leaving, only to be stopped by Annika's tiny voice. "Could you stay? I…I understand if you don't want to, I just…I don't want to be alone tonight."

Don paused, then nodded and ruffled her hair. "Of course, hon. Just…Cerise and I need to find a better parking spot. We're in 2-hour parking."

She gestured toward the floor, where her keys might have ended up. "Use the fob on my keychain. It'll get you into the apartment garage. I don't use my parking space."

"Alright. We'll be back in no time, okay? Just finish that cocoa."

The two of them left the apartment, the door latch clicking shut behind them to mark their exit. Annika simply sat on her bed, still hugging her legs and trying not to cry. It was a whole lot easier to do that now that she'd spilled the beans. Don had been right (as usual); all these secrets had been eating away at the back of her mind, and talking about at least some of it had lifted a huge chunk of that weight off her shoulders. And she'd gotten great advice from her ex and best friend about why she felt as messed-up as she did over this.

Now she needed to make a decision.

She needed to decide if she forgave Serena for what she did.

At this point, she could just…not forgive her. Sever all ties, never talk to her again, and just drop her from Nika's life. It…well, at first glance, it wouldn't be hard. But on second thought, it would be hard to ignore the other woman. There would undoubtedly be a Coffeebucks incident where they'd _have_ to talk if Nika wanted to keep her job, and now Nika was caught up in all the same Magical Girl politics that Serena was. Avoiding her would be hard, but…it was probably better than forgiving her.

On the other hand…it would be a whole lot easier to just forgive her for parenticide. But…could she? Could she really? Could she honestly look Serena Williams in the eye and tell her that murdering her parents by wishes or magic or whatever was the right thing to do? This…none of this made any sense, and now she was just taking her train of thought and running it in circles.

She finished off the last sip of lukewarm cocoa and set the cup aside, now free to focus all her effort on trying to wrap her mind around the issue.

Except…she couldn't, could she? That was the issue in and of itself, wasn't it? Trying to figure out her response to this conundrum left her in more of a conundrum.

Naturally, Cerise and Don picked that moment to return.

They didn't say anything. In fact, their silence was somehow more stifling and terrifying. But instead of talking or offering reassurances, they let their actions speak for them. They simply borrowed some nightclothes (poor Don had to cope with a particularly girly tee. Nika and Cerise would've given him crap about it had the situation not been more emotionally taxing), curled up against her on both sides, and held her until she fell asleep.

Even with all the issues and conflicts roiling around in her brain…between the good company, the good cocoa in her stomach, and the reassuring heft of her frying pan not far away…

Annika was asleep within minutes.

Getting someone to cover her shift the next morning was as taxing as it was costly. She now owed Gabby too many favors to count, but at least the other woman was understanding of the issue. Even if they'd just said it was a date gone sour, Gabby seemed to understand. In her own…Gabby-way.

That left Nika and Cerise alone the next day, since Don had a shift of his own to deal with. Cerise didn't start her new job until this weekend, and Annika now had no shift to work and could afford to avoid her classes.

The two ended up lazing around on Annika's couch, watching whatever corny crap they could find with Nika's streaming service.

Cerise had been uncharacteristically quiet the entire time. She barely laughed at the movie, and even when she did, it was a halfhearted chuckle. She barely ate before claiming she was full. She didn't even comment on Don's choice in borrowed nightwear. Something was seriously wrong, and while Nika had her suspicions…she also didn't want to pry.

The two of them were halfway through some weird-as-fuck interpretation of Treasure Island meets Gulliver's Travels when Cerise finally made a multi-syllabic comment.

"Annika?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to ask you a few questions. I need you to be perfectly and completely honest with me. If you can't say anything in response without breaking your contract of secrets or whatever, then keep quiet for yes or say 'bananagram' for no. Got it?"

"Uh…sure?"

"You either got it or you don't."

"I-I got it."

"Promise me?"

"Yeah, I promise."

"First question: Did Serena attack you last night, in any way, shape, or form?"

"No."

"Okay. Second question: Were you yelling at someone last night to get out of your apartment?"

"….yeah."

"Third question: Who were you yelling at?"

"…"

"…fine. Fourth question: Did that person hurt you in any way, shape, or form?"

"Bananagram. Why the interrogation?"

"Just bear with me, okay? Fifth question: Why did they leave your apartment?"

"I beat them up with my purse, and then my frying pan."

 _Snrk!_ "I would've paid so much cash to see that happen. Okay. Sixth question: Did you call the cops about it?"

"Bananagram."

"Alright then. Seventh question: Does this home intrusion have to do with your big secret crap?"

"….."

"…got it. Last question: Why the ever-loving fuck can't you tell me about this stuff!?"

"B-Because I made a promise, okay!? I'm not going against that!"

" _Fuck_ your promise! That could've been your _life_ on the line last night! Are you seriously gonna put your stupid promise to a _liar_ and a _murderer_ over _your own goddamn_ _ **life**_!?"

"I-It—It's not like you'd believe me if I told you, anyway!"

"OH _REALLY_!? Fucking TRY me!"

Annika was about to shout something else at Cerise, before an idea flashed through her mind. Specifically, a brief mental image about a particular map from yesterday.

"I can show you, okay? We need to go somewhere nearby, but I can show you what this is all about, as long as you promise not to tell anyone."

Cerise's brow furrowed slightly with worry. "Don?"

"…fine. If you can get him to believe you, then go ahead and tell Don everything. But if you want to see the truth about this big secret thing…then follow me."

"I'll grab my stuff. And this had better be worth all the fuss." Cerise stormed off to grab her bag from Nika's bedroom.

Nika herself grabbed her purse, moved its contents to a backpack, and added her trusty frying pan to the mix.

From the curtained window, an elongated shadow caught her attention. Because sitting in the window was a silhouette of the distinctive shape of Kyubey. She could almost feel his dull red eyes boring through the curtains into her mind.

" _Don't you dare try to talk me down from this, Kyubey,"_ Nika thought, focusing on the words and hoping it would understand.

The response was plain and simple. _"Why would I? At this point, nothing I could say would dissuade you."_

"We going or what, Nancy Drew?"

She stared firmly at the catlike figure, before turning to the front door. "Yeah. Just follow me."

* * *

"…okay, Nika? I know I agreed to see it, but what kind of group hangs out in this part of town if they aren't hookers or vampires?"

"Just trust me, Cerise. Okay?"

"I mean, sure. Just…y'know…there've been a lot of shootings in this neighborhood lately. Can't blame me for being a little nervous, right?"

Annika ignored her, looking around the area. There were a lot of homeless people sleeping on the streets here, which was surprisingly normal for this part of town. What was less normal for this area were the harsh glares the two of them were getting from those people, or the dead-eyed thousand-yard stare of the ones who weren't shooting out murder glares.

Oh yeah, and the Wraiths. Those were new.

They patrolled the streets in little clusters, like invisible gangs of white-and-grey ten-foot-tall specters. Some simply wisped by, flashing a menacing sharp-toothed grin as they passed. Others were clustering around the homeless people lying on the street, and either just standing there or grabbing onto them with taloned hands. All in all, there were probably three Wraiths for every person they saw.

But it still wasn't enough. Because Cerise hadn't commented on them. Which meant she couldn't see them yet. And Annika was beginning to suspect she wouldn't until they found a Nightmare.

At the very least, the Wraiths were ignoring the two wayward visitors. Either they weren't giving off enough Miasma to be worth chasing over the homeless folk in the streets, or word had spread about how Annika was armed with a frying pan and wasn't afraid to use it. Nika herself chose to believe the latter.

So that left the two of them walking down the streets of a bad part of town, the oppressive atmosphere of misery and despair surrounding them on all sides and pressing down on every part of Annika like a physical force. Like background noise you hear all your life and only now become aware of, Annika felt it on all sides and from all directions pressing in like the claws of some living monster. And even if she couldn't see the Wraiths, Annika got the sense that Cerise felt it too. She might not know what she was feeling, but at least she was aware it was there. A fact that gave Annika a lot of hope that her stupid, hairbrained plan might actually work.

All she needed to do now was find the thickest, densest pocket of Miasma in this massive hotspot, and she'd have herself a Nightmare.

Easier said than done, of course. The atmosphere of the place was so much of a dense blanket that telling what was a spike and what was just more hell was nearly impossible. But she'd be damned if she'd stop over something like that.

"Hey…what's that guy doing?"

"Huh?"

Annika turned around, having utterly failed to realize that Cerise had stopped walking with her (she made a mental note to keep better track of her human friends). Instead, Cerise was several feet behind her, staring off down a narrow alleyway.

Grimacing slightly, Annika ran back to her friend and followed her gaze. Except…what she saw in that alley stunned her to her core.

Wraiths.

Just past the alley, in what must have been a parking lot of some kind…there was an enormous crowd of Wraiths, clustered so tightly that they were practically a singular object, all staring at the same thing. The nearest few turned back to look at Annika and Cerise, before deciding they weren't worth it and turning back.

There had to have been hundreds of them. Not even in the Labyrinth had Annika ever seen so many—

"Hey, Annika, can you see what he's holding? I can't quite…"

"What who's holding? Who are you even talking about?"

"That guy. The one in the parking lot." She gestured right into the middle of the crowd of Wraiths.

Right in the middle…

Where they were all looking….

"Hey…what's he doing…?"

But why would they all be clustered around just one—

""Oh no…""

Taloned hands were drawn from under the Wraith's robes, rearing up to lunge.

Cerise started running forward. "Dude! Dude, STOP!"

 _ **BLAM!**_

Like the starter pistol to a race, every single Wraith in the crowd piled onto the man. And as they did, they…melted into each other, morphing into an enormous pitch-black mass that grew and wobbled with a mind of its own.

"Cerise, get back!" Annika shouted.

"But…he just—He just…shot himself! I need to call 9-1-1, make sure he's okay!"

" _Cerise, GET BACK!_ "

The dark blob began to flex out in bizzare ways, various body parts appearing on its surface at random. Eyes, mouths, arms, feet, vines, claws…all appearing in its surface before vanishing just as quickly.

"What the fuck is your hangup, Nika!? He just _shot himself_! W-We need to help him!"

Reality began warping around the blob as it took a more solid shape. Specifically, it looked human, but with huge wing-like blobs growing out from behind its back. The whole thing sprouted from a giant flower, which itself was surrounded by a nest of deadly-looking brambles.

The ground around the Nightmare began twisting and shifting, changing shape into God-knows-what.

Annika dashed forward, grabbing Cerise and trying to drag her away from the reality-warping demon-thing, only for the world to twist around the two of them until it turned into the hellish landscape of a Labyrinth.

The sky here was pristine and beautiful, but only right at the top. The closer your gaze got to the ground, the more it was filled with greenish-brown poison and dirt that filled your mind and clogged your soul. The ground itself…it wasn't even ground, really. It was a mass made of hundreds of thousands of people, all frozen in time as they desperately crawled over each other to reach the sky. But the ones at the peaks of the spire-like mounds didn't look terribly happy. If anything, they looked scared, all their gazes fixed on one thing.

The Nightmare.

It had taken the form of a beautiful angel, pristine and white-robed and pure. Brilliant golden wings held it high above the mass of desperate suffering frozen people, while a golden longbow and a quiver full of thunderbolts kept those people well below it. Once again, though, the familiar static-covered face and pale-grey skin marked it as a Nightmare, and the white robes would've made Annika think it was a Wraith were it not also thirty feet tall.

She didn't know how she knew all those details. She just felt it, somewhere in the back of her brain. Just like she felt the angel's piercing gaze turn onto her and Cerise.

"Annika…where are we? What is that thing!?"

"You can see it?"

"OF COURSE I CAN SEE IT! I WANT TO _STOP_ SEEING IT! How do we get out of here!?"

Annika kept her gaze fixed on the Nightmare above them, as it hovered overhead to look down on the two of them. "I…I'm not sure…"

" _WHAT_!?"

"This plan may not have been entirely thought through, okay?" The Angel drew a thunderbolt from its quiver and prepared to fire it down on them, prompting Annika to draw her frying pan. "Get ready to run."

"A _frying pan_!? You can't be—"

"RUN!" Annika grabbed Cerise and threw the two of them to one side.

 _ **KRA-KOOM!**_ The flash of lighting and blast of thunder nearly deafened Annika, but she pulled her wits together, grabbed her friend, and started running for it.

The Angel drew another thunderbolt, keeping pace with them easily.

Annika tried to think of a way out, an escape route, anything. She briefly thought of using her frying pan for defense, only to realize it probably wouldn't do much against a thunderbolt. Even if it was a magical thunderbolt and not a real one, it probably qualified as "really fucking hot". A frying pan was a one-time defense against that, at best.

She shoved Cerise around a spire of frozen clamoring people, nearly losing her own balance in the process before Cerise pulled her into their "hiding" spot.

"What the fuck is going on, Annika!?"

"A warm welcome to the Big Secret Club, that's what."

"This is crazy!"

Annika quickly tried to take in their surroundings. Serena had said that Labyrinths were like pocket dimensions, which meant they had to have limits and boundaries. So if they picked a direction and kept running, they'd eventually leave. But the worst part was how open it all was. There were no rocks or trees to hide under, and the spires were a comfort more than anything. It would be fine if the Nightmare couldn't fly, but unfortunately it could. Plus…the flower and brambles weren't anywhere to be seen…and Annika had felt like they were important-

"ANNIKA!"

Annika's gaze darted upward at whatever was casting the shadow that'd just fallen over them. Lo and behold, the Nightmare had caught up with them, another lightning bolt at the ready.

Annika grabbed Cerise, gearing up to throw them both to the side. Only to be interrupted by a barrage of green magic bolts that tore open one of the Nightmare's wings and forced it to flee.

Wait…green?

Annika ran around the spire (Cerise angrily shouting about not being left behind) to look in the direction the shots came from. And lo and behold, standing atop a distant spire was a short-yet-heroic figure.

"Kristina!"

"Who?"

"Big Secret Buddy number 3."

Kristina jumped off the spire, slamming into the ground not two feet away in a way that looked like it _really_ hurt. Somewhere in the back of Nika's mind, she was remembering that Kris was a Magical Girl who didn't have to worry about that, but the rest of her instinctively winced. Kris herself only looked slightly different from when they'd first met. Like something of a cross between a cowgirl and a '50s greaser, adorned with a bright green gem on her belt buckle and wielding two ornate silver six-shooters.

She also looked really angry. Which was only slightly more pressing.

"What the HELL are you doing here, Blondie!? And why do you have company!? Do you have any idea how much danger you two are in!?" She angrily shoved one of her pistols against Annika's forehead. "You'd better have one FUCKING _FANTASTIC_ explanation ready!"

"Yeah, but I figured—"

"No. You know what? Just shut the fuck up and get running. I'll handle the rest."

A loud screech drew their attention, and Cerise's panicked cry of "Oh god, it's coming back."

"Then GET! FUCKING! GOING!" Kris aimed her pistols and fired a rapid-fire barrage of green bolts, only to growl when they completely missed.

"What? Kris, what's wrong!?"

"Didn't you hear me!? Get going!" Kristina leaped out of the way of another lightning bolt, while Nika and Cerise were left to get thrown backwards by it.

"Kristina, I can help! Just tell me what's wrong!"

"This stupid fucking smog is messing with my—"

With a loud crackle like thunder, the ground around Kristina broke open and sprouted dozens of vines surrounding her. They looked like brambles, but every thorn was replaced by a syringe, and the vines themselves looked more like barbed wire.

Kris just barely leaped out of the way before they snapped shut. Except when she landed next to the two humans, Nika caught sight of a massive gash on her leg where one had caught her.

"This is insane! Where's this coming from!?"

"Annika, we should get out of here!"

"But—"

"Listen to your friend, dammit!"

"I'm just saying, I think there might be two of them!"

Kristina looked like she was about to reply, before grabbing the humans and diving out of the way of another lightning bolt, followed immediately by more vines shooting out of the ground and grabbing for them. Before they even knew it, the three of them were just barely clearing the smog. And that's when she saw it.

A massive lily-looking flower sitting at the lowest point of the ground, spewing a continuous stream of greenish-brown smog out of its…whatever you call the thing in the middle of the flower.

Before she could get a better look at it, though, the three of them dropped back into the smog and crashed to the ground.

"Just get out of here, already!"

"Kristina, there's two of them!"

"What!?"

"There's two nightmares! One's the angel, but I think the other's a smog-spewing flower that's creating all these brambles!"

"But two Nightmares in the same labyrinth!? That's insane!"

"I'm just telling you what I saw, okay!?"

"This isn't happening! This isn't happening!"

"Not helping, Blondie!"

"Wh-but it's crucial information!"

"Not you, Blondie, the other-" Kristina interrupted herself by grabbing the two of them and catapulting herself away from yet another lightning bolt. "Sonuva bitch, I officially hate this place!"

"What's going on!? Just _tell me_!"

"It's this stupid fucking smog! It keeps messing with my magic! It won't let me go all-out, I can't see that Nightmare clearly when I'm down here, and it's seriously _pissing me off_!"

"You can't see it clearly?"

"YES! I _just_ —" Kristina cut short mid-rant, before turning to Nika. "Can you?"

Annika smiled. "With perfect clarity."

Kris gave her the most predatory grin Annika had ever seen. "Blondie, grab onto me and hang on tight."

"Right. Cerise! Grab on!"

"This is insane! This is fucking insane!"

"Where'd you get her?"

"Best friend." Annika grabbed Cerise and hoisted the other woman over her shoulder, as Kris pulled both of them into a princess carry as she leaped into the air.

The trio alighted on top of one of the spires, as Annika and Cerise were unceremoniously (though somewhat carefully) dropped onto it.

"Vines shouldn't reach us up here, so leave Other Blondie behind. Blondie, you stay on my back. You're my eyes on this one. If I'm gonna miss, call me out on it!"

"B-but I'm not—"

"BLONDIE!" Kris grabed her by the shoulders, fixing her with a harsh glare. "If you wanna get out of this one alive, then you need to do exactly what I say. So get on, before the flying bastard notices we're up here!"

"He already has!" Cerise screamed, pointing upwards.

Kris reacted first, turning on her heels and crossing her arms in front of her. As she did so, a translucent green barrier appeared in front of her, only to be destroyed by a powerful lightning bolt a split-second later. It didn't stop the lightning, but it seemed to make it turn just far enough off course to miss the three of them by a hair.

"No time to argue!" Kris grabbed Annika's wrist and all but dragged her onto Kris' back. The two of them leaped away just as the Angel nocked another arrow.

Kristina twirled her pistols in her hands with a slight flash of green. "Where is it?"

"There!" Nika called out, pointing right at it before hastily adding, "About to fire!"

Kris' foot smacked into a faceless screaming statue before leaping straight upward, the lightning bolt vaporizing the top of the spire instead of the two of them.

"Keep pointing at it!" Kris hollered. Nika obeyed the order, and Kristina had her guns follow Annika's finger (even if the smog was incredibly thin this close to the Angel's altitude, Kris was obviously taking no chances).

Kristina began to grin. "Alright then, you bastard! EAT THIS!"

And with a loud hum, the tops of Kristina's silver six-shooters opened up and sprayed out bright green…

…wings.

Giant minimalist wings made of brilliant green magic that splayed out to either side of them. They obviously weren't made for flying, but they still thrummed and buzzed with immense power.

And when Kristina pulled the triggers of her twin guns, those wings instantly swept right back into the pistols to emerge out the barrels as enormous green beams of lazery death.

Their combined aim proved true, and the two beams hit the Angel right in its torso, forcing it to dissipate into miasma (and one Grief Cube) with an unholy screech.

The two of them fell back to the ground, landing with a pose straight out of a comic book. Kristina flourished her guns with another flash of green magic, spared a brief glance at the gem on her belt with a grimace, before grinning back at Annika. "Now _that's_ how it's done!"

Then she blinked, only now realizing that Annika had been shouting at her in a panicked frenzy during the entire fall.

Annika frantically pointed to the brambles that surrounded them, wrapping themselves into a loose dome.

Nika practically died from panic right then and there. There was no jumping out of this. They were trapped, well and truly.

"Fucking smog!" Kris growled, readying her guns as the vines closed in for the kill.

Only for a flurry of blue flashes to completely eradicate the vines surrounding them.

While Kristina blinked, as if in a slight daze, Annika watched Serena flip over the two of them, her scythe-berd changing into an axe-berd even as she brought it down onto the ground. As she did, the entire ground around the three of them seemed to shake, like something just beneath it was flailing in its death throes.

"Serena!" she shouted, pulling herself off of Kristina's back. "You saved our lives!"

"What are you talking about?" Serena muttered softly. "I'm just killing things. It's what I do, isn't it?"

Before Annika could wrap her head around what the object of her affections had just said, Serena leaped away towards a distant pit that Annika could only assume was the flower she'd seen earlier.

"Ugh…I feel drunk…" Annika quickly whipped back around to face Kris, who was staggering slightly and rubbing her head. She did indeed look drunk, which Annika would've found pretty funny were it not for the circumstances. "Stupid smog…"

"The smog…Kris, please! Get back up to Cerise!"

"Whaaaaa?"

"The smog! It's messing with your head! You need to get up and out of it as quick as you can!" Apparently, the smog did more than just throw off a person's aim. It also seemed to dull their reflexes. Bigtime.

"I…yeah…back to—"

"Back to Cerise, yes! Once you're out of the smog, you should be able to see the flower at the center of this place! Do that wing-shooting thing again and that'll take care of it, right?"

Kris chuckled. "I would, but…I'm pretty low on magic. That move burns through what I have like crazy."

"The grief cube…"

"Be a dear and get it for me, wouldja?" As much as Annika hated to admit it, Kris was certainly more palatable in this state.

Even so, she didn't have the time to focus on that. She had to get that Grief Cube to Kris, no matter what. So she turned vaguely in the direction where she last saw the Angel Monster. Except…shit, where was that!? This was gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack, which happened to be in a minefield, which happened to be on a battlefield. Annika was quickly beginning to reconsider her choice about helping out.

 _'No, FOCUS!'_ Biting her tongue to try and stop herself from panicking, Nika dashed off in her best approximation of the right direction. Scrambling, panting, nearly tripping over the grasping arms and screaming faces of the landscape around her.

A few brambles pulled themselves up from the ground in front of her, preparing to strike as Annika staggered headlong into them. Almost on instinct, she raised her frying pan like it was a shield blocking the brambles while the force of their impact knocked her flat on her back.

She howled in pain as something with sharp edges tore into her spine, rolling off of it with just enough time to look down and-

...the Grief Cube!

Desperate and panicked, she snatched it up in her grasp and shouted at the top of her lungs, "I've got it! I've got the cube!"

 _KRA-THOOOM!_

An enormous wall of syringe-thorned brambles sprouted up in front of her, poised for the killing blow while also blocking her off from her friends.

In hindsight, she should've seen that coming. Serena had said that Nightmares were substantially more intelligent than Wraiths, and that probably included the ones who looked like plants. If it was clever enough to calculate landing points and set traps, then it would've seen what happened to its buddy and realized the Grief Cube was the key to its demise.

The Grief Cube that Annika was currently holding in her hands.

Suddenly more terrified than she'd ever been, she raised a shaking hand and frying pan in a halfhearted defense.

They rushed at her, and she was about to close her eyes and prepare for the end. Until, that is, they were all cut to shreds in a flurry of blue magic arcs.

Serena hit the ground hard, staggering heavily, but nontheless holding her scythe-berd out to one side. Her face was clouded over by hair and shadows and an unreadable expression, while her body language was somewhere between "lost in thought" and "near-blackout drunk".

But Serena's heart nearly stopped when she saw Serena's Soul Gem.

It was almost pitch black, and barely even glowing anymore.

Serena turned around to keep fighting, and Annika's breath caught in her throat as she tried to shout at her.

That didn't stop her, though. Annika grimaced and forced the lump out of her throat. "Serena, stop! You'll die!"

Annika could barely hear her over the clamour of more brambles surfacing, but she made out enough.

"Why should I care?" Serena's mutterings were quiet and lifeless, and Nika couldn't tell if that was the smog or Serena herself. "My only real friend hates me. Why should I bother?"

Serena prepared to jump up, but she was way too slow. Her reflexes dulled by the smog. Even a novice like Annika could tell she'd never evade in time.

Hundreds of lethally-pointed bramble vines dove for Serena's Soul Gem, aiming to tear her mind and soul apart for good.

But Annika closed her eyes, gritted her teeth hard enough they felt like they were breaking, and made the greatest mistake of her entire life.

She charged.

Afterward, she chose to believe that there was a war cry and swelling dramatic music. But in truth, her war cry was more pf a frantic, pained scream that was her vent for all the convoluted emotions of the week.

The clang of metallic bramble-vines crashing into her frying pan, though...that was real enough to hurt.

Every muscle in Annika's body screamed in pain, like she was tearing herself in half with exertion alone.

But with the combination of her momentum, her leverage, and every ounce of effort she could possibly muster, she threw the brambles back until she was between them and her crush.

Gasping for air, she turned back to Serena, who simply stared back with the most dumbfounded expression Nika'd ever seen.

"I...but you...I thought you-"

"You...IDIOT!" _KLANG!_

Even if her overworked muscles prevented it from being too powerful, Annika's frying pan still slammed into Serena's gorgeous face with enough force to knock her backwards a few steps.

"OW! Annie, what the-"

"You stupid blockhead!" Annika screamed, throwing another halfhearted swing that missed completely. "You really think I HATE you!?"

"Well...yeah. Why else would you-"

"DUMBASS!" Another swing, another miss. Nika's tears were starting to flow in earnest now. "Serena, you big dumbass, I'm in _love_ with you! For some stupid, unbelievable, unimaginable reason, I'm head over fucking _heels_ in _love_ with you! And that's why I can't stand watching you _kill yourself like this_!"

Serena simply blinked as Annika all but collapsed against her, crying in earnest.

"Did you ever even _think_ about how heartbroken I would be if you _died_!? And you'd honestly let that happen just because I said I _needed TIME_!? You'd honestly let yourself die over a little _SPAT_!? I thought you were better than that!"

"But you said-"

"I said I needed time to think! And I did! I still do! But I _REFUSE_ to let things end like this!" Annika grabbed Serena's magical half-jacket and pulled herself up to stare straight into Serena's bewildered blue eyes. "I'm not letting you die like this! Not if I have anything to say about it! Because I care about you, and so help me God I _love_ you, and I want to see you be happy!

"Which is why you're going to put a lid on this stupid tantrum! You're going to take this," she shoved the Grief Cube into Serena's hands, "to Kris, I'm going to escape with Cerise, you and Kris are going to kill this stupid flower, and we are going to _LIVE_! And then we're going to sit down, face-to-face, and have a long hard talk like _real fucking adults_!"

"B-but...why? Why do you even care!?"

"Because I want this to work, Serena! I want _us_ to work! No matter how much it takes or how our relationship pans out, I want you in my life! Because I refuse to lose another close friend to a _misunderstanding_!"

Annika's face softened, morphing from pain and anguish into a genuine smile.

"So hurry up and kill this thing, so we can all go home and have a beer."

Only a moment or two passed by before Serena's face stopped looking so bewildered.

Instead, it became the most beautiful smile Annika'd ever seen.

Serena gently hugged Annika, trying to force back tears of her own.

"Deal."

The two separated, another scythe-berd manifesting in Serena's hand.

"Stay safe, Annie."

"You too."

Serena leaped as high as possible, trying to get out of the smog and find Kris, bramble vines hot on her heels and her gem glowing just a little brighter. Annika, for her part, turned and used the brambles ignoring her as an opportunity to sprint for the exit.

And there WAS an exit. There had to be. Nightmares weren't all-powerful, and it seemed unlikely that their little pocket-dimensions were infinite. That meant that they had an edge, and all Nika had to do was run away from the monster to find it.

Well..."run". Stagger might've been more accurate. She was very close to reaching her physical limits.

Finally, the world around her started to shift and warp, and she started to feel like she was pressing on something. Or...maybe not pressing, but like she was fighting some force trying to drag her back in.

With a howl of frustration and effort, she finally broke through whatever wall was keeping her in. The world warped in earnest, leaving her to collapse onto the parking lot and nearly throw up from exertion alone. The day had been taxing in every sense of the word, both physically and emotionally.

After a minute or two, Cerise warped and twisted into existence in the air behind her, promptly falling to her knees and staring ahead in horrified bewilderment.

"You alright, hon?"

Cerise numbly nodded in response. Before adding, "M-Maybe? I think? I'm not dead, so there's that. But...I-I just..."

'Yeah. I know what you mean."

"What...what even WAS all that!?"

Annika took a deep breath and began.

"So...basically, there's this field in the Universe called the Miasma..."


	5. 5: A Much-Needed Talk

**Chapter 5: A Much-needed Talk**

It was well into the evening by the time the exposition-fest had ended. And while Cerise and Don were being filled in on all the ten different kinds of crazy that they were now wrapped up in, Annika was learning a far more important life lesson.

Kristina may be the shortest person in the room. She may look and act like some Bieber-obsessed Tweeny-bopper who was catapulted through the costume department of Rebel Without a Cause.

But she's one of the scariest people alive when she's angry.

For almost ten minutes straight, Kristina had chewed Annika out for "idiotic, hair-brained stupidity, for which she should get the shit kicked out of her right here and now", before leaving in a huff since she was still technically on a hunting shift. She promised more lectures and death threats later, though. Which don't exactly have the same impact on someone who knows she's right, but...still. Nika'd never thought she'd call a pubescent teen "terrifying".

Serena handled explaining the whole "Magical Girl" thing to the other two. And the most baffling part was how opposite the reactions of Cerise and Don were. Don didn't say a single word throughout the entire explanation, simply sitting still and resting his chin on his hands. Sometimes his eyes were closed as he listened intently, other times he studied Serena's face for any sign of deception or manipulation. Cerise, meanwhile, kept pacing or fidgeting and asking all kinds of questions that Nika never had (mostly because the answers were implied pretty heavily).

So Kyubey's an alien? Yes.

Where's Kyubey's planet? No clue.

How do they make the wishes come true? No clue.

What happens if you wish for more wishes? Kyubey says no, then presumably laughs at you for the rest of time.

By the time Nika joined in, Cerise had moved on from asking sensible questions to just asking for clarification on things she'd already heard. Once that started up, she tuned her out and heated up some cocoa for everyone.

Don was the only one who accepted the cocoa. Serena and Cerise were in the middle of an argument.

"But that doesn't make sense! They would've figured out _some_ kind of defense by now!"

Serena groaned into her palms. "I already _told_ you. Wraiths. Aren't. Smart. They run on instinct and look for food and _nothing_. _Else."_

"B-But...things don't work that way! After being hunted for so long, they would've evolved some kind of countermeasure!"

"They're. Magical. Magical. Things. Don't. Evolve." Serena only noticed Annika's return to the couch when she nearly smacked her in the face with her elbow. She started to apologize, before her frustration apparently took over. "Annie, your friend is being difficult. Tag in for a bit."

Nika simply smiled, nodded, and offered cocoa. Then she promptly ignored Cerise and asked Don, "So what do you think of all this?"

That, at least, shut Cerise up.

Don took a long, deep breath, and firmly stated, "Annika, I thought you said you'd never do drugs. And I never expected you to drag Cerise into it as well."

"GAH!" "DON!" "Pffffft..."

Annika had a _really_ hard time keeping herself from shouting. "Don, be serious! This isn't some hallucination, okay!? And you just said I'm not a drug person, and I meant that, so that's not a possibility here-"

That was about the point where Cerise overpowered Nika's voice. "God dammit, Don! Annika, maybe, but _me_!? How could you have so little faith in me!?"

"Hey, I'm being realistic here. Occam's Razor, right? What's more plausible: that magic and monsters are real, or that you all had a seriously bad trip?"

"Don, babe...be serious!" Cerise was getting so animated that Nika and Serena had to move everything around to prevent her from breaking something. "You know me! You know when I'm lying! And four people having the same exact hallucination is just insane!"

"Actually...not really." Don closed his eyes, taking a long sip of cocoa to gather his thoughts. "If all three of you ended up taking a hallucinogen, and kept talking to each other about what you were seeing, then there's the possibility that your hallucations would update in real time to support each others statements about what should be there. Then you all come out of it remembering what is, for the most part, the same story. The only question at that point is which drug you took."

A long, painful silence stretched through the room.

Serena was the one who finally broke it. "Hey, Annie? I'm gonna borrow your friend and chuck him in a Labyrinth for a bit. That alright?"

"Serena, please don't kill Don."

"Oh please, I wouldn't let him _die_. That'd be crazy."

"Crazy like two Nightmares sharing a Labyrinth?"

"...touche."

Don interjected, the first signs of genuine (albeit slight) panic showing through his stoicism. "So you're really expecting me to believe that there's some secret magical society through the entire world fighting evil monsters, with _no one_ noticing through the _entirety of human history_...and you two bumped into it by _accident_?"

"Well...it wasn't really an accident. Nika led me into the Labyrinth-"

"Which we all agree was a stupid, shortsighted decision that she seriously regrets."

"...gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Serena."

"Well, it was."

Cerise interrupted our little spat. "And then Annika found out because she briefly stalked Serena. So it's hardly an accident."

"Right, exactly," Nika cut in. "At best, it was a poor decision caused by a lack of understanding."

Don grimaced, clearly still trying to wrap his mind around the whole situation. Annika herself took advantage of his silence to change the subject, "What's more important is that now we know a little more about this whole perception thing. It only seems to kick in when you go into a Labyrinth, which...I'm still not sure why. Maybe something to do with the high concentration of Miasma interfering with the extrasensory perception regions of the brain?"

"Smaller words, please, Annie. I don't have the energy to figure out your technobabble right now."

"I thought that one was obvious...whatever. You should probably call Lauren and let her know about everything that happened."

Serena just waved her hand. "Kris is on it."

"Hey, Nika? You said I could see monsters and stuff, right?"

"Yeah. Sorry again."

Cerise pointed to the window. "So is that cat thing a monster too?"

"Huh?" Annika followed her gaze, to spot Kyubey perched outside my window, looking in with his typical blank expression as he was backlit by the setting sun. "Oh, that's just a Kyubey. They're like...the Magical Girl HR department...or something."

"Weeeiiiird."

"Wait, where are you guys looking?" Serena craned her neck back and forth, scanning basically the entire apartment. "I don't see him anywhere!"

"What are you talking about, Serena? He's right outside the-" Nika looked back out the window, only to catch a quick glimpse of his enormous fluffy tail flicking out of sight. "...nevermind, he left."

"So you three are _still_ hallucinating? That can't be a good-"

"Don...can you, for two minutes, run on the assumption that we're not insane or high? Please? If nothing else, it'll keep Serena or I from punching you."

"Nika, please don't punch my boyfriend."

"He's questioning your sanity, hon."

"It's cool, he does it all the time." Cerise briefly waved her hands up and down, as if she was emphasizing the "not a big deal" part of it.

With that, Don stood up. "Well...crazy or no crazy, I still need to get up early tomorrow. So I think I should head back home. I'm...I'll figure out things with Cerise."

"Oh. Right, yeah. I need to call Gabby and see if I can pay her back for today."

Serena shot Nika a quizzical look. "What happened today?"

"Oh, she's just...covering my shift at work. 'Cause...you know...I couldn't really make it in after...yesterday."

She deflated. "Oh. Right."

Don made his way to the door, probably ignoring everyone else out of a desire to ignore their new and absurd reality. Cerise, though, made a pit-stop to hug Annika tightly.

"You sure you'll be okay without us?" she asked in a whisper.

"Huh? Oh...yeah, I'll be fine. I...kinda need to talk to her alone, anyway."

"...alright." Cerise let go of her closest friend and started for the door. "And you be careful, okay Nika? Your place is pretty close to that whole big ugly monster mash."

"Relax, Cherry. I can handle myself, and I've got a place to go if things get too nasty."

"You can always crash with me if you need to."

Annika blinked in mild surprise, realizing that Cerise hadn't even _reacted_ to her pet-name. She must've been really tense.

"I...I don't think I could. You know why. But I'll...keep it in mind."

"Right. Well, stay in touch, hon."

"You too."

And with that (and probably some nonverbal urging from Don), the actual couple left Nika's apartment, leaving behind the couple whose status was currently somewhere in the stratosphere.

Serena shuffled her feet a little nervously, obviously trying to dodge the topic. "So...what's the story with you three, anyway? Certainly seemed like you have a lot of history."

"Oh. It's, uh...she's my kinda-estranged best friend, and he's my ex-fiance. And they're dating. It's kind of a long and boring story."

"Boring!?" She laughed. "It seriously sounds like something out of a soap opera! Sign me the hell up!"

"Yeah. 'Next on Sand through the Hourglass: Poor college student Annika becomes pregnant with the baby of her ex-fiance's current girlfriend!'"

"Hey, don't go knockin' on Sands. It's pretty riveting when you're in the right mindset!"

Annika's raised eyebrow and contemptuous smirk perfectly summed up her emotional response to that statement. "...forgive me if I remain skeptical."

They fell back into an awkward silence. A silence Serena once again broke.

"...I kinda really wanna hear this story, you know."

"No you don't. Like I said, it's nothing interesting. I just screwed up bigtime and paid the price."

"Hey, it can't be a bigger screw-up than my wish, right?"

Annika winced. "Can we...not joke about that? It's a little too soon."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." Serena curled up a little bit, like she was trying to become a protective ball. "I just...I just wanna know where you stand with them. Because I'm not exactly up for the whole 'sharing' thing and-"

"It's nothing like that, okay!?"

"Then what _is_ it like, Annie? Just...I just wanna know. Sorry if I'm being forceful."

"No, I...I understand." I took a deep breath, mentally preparing myself for the resurgence of painful memories.

"Don and I were high school sweethearts. Started dating in freshman year, and he popped the question our second year of college. He was incredible. A damn talented chef; you'll have to taste his sushi sometime. And our relationship wasn't...it wasn't perfect, but it was good enough that I wanted it to keep going, y'know?"

She nodded, uncoiling from her little protective ball.

"Then, one night, I got a little too drunk at a party. Wound up making out with this one girl; no idea how. I don't even know her name, all I know is that she had dark skin and pink hair. But...that kiss was a wake-up call. It got me thinking, 'if kissing a female stranger feels as great as sex with the man I'm marrying, what the hell is wrong with this picture?' Which is...how I realized I was into girls."

"Yikes. This really is an episode of Sands."

Annika chuckled. "I did warn you. Now, any sane person would calmly explain to Don about my earth-shattering revelation, but I was...I...you know, I have no idea what I was fucking thinking. I was scared, maybe? Or I didn't want to admit the truth to myself, let alone someone else. Whatever. The point is that instead of talking to Don about it, I decided to try and...'confirm my hypothesis'. By chasing after a classmate of mine named Cerise, who was openly bisexual, comfortable with casual sex, and currently available."

Annika's voice trailed off, as she tried to hold back...it was either tears or screams. She couldn't decide which. Serena, blessed angel that she was, silently listened and waited for almost a minute until Annika started talking again.

"So, Cerise and I got together, became besties, started dating. The works. Turns out, sex with someone of your preferred gender feels generally amazing. And I got...addicted, I guess? It got so bad, my grades actually started nosediving. And Don...poor Don, I constantly neglected him and stood him up and left him to spend the night alone. He took it pretty hard, but...he eventually got in touch with someone he could confide in and get comfort from. Who, by sheer coincidence, was the person I was neglecting him for. It took all of two seconds for them to compare notes and realize what a horrible, awful person I was being to both of them."

Serena winced in sympathy pain, before offering comforting shoulder pats. Annika, for her part, tried to keep her voice from cracking.

"Half an hour later, my best friend and my fiance both said they hated me. Told me I was a stupid, horrible person, and they never wanted to see me again. And the worst part was, I couldn't even tell them they were wrong. They...they ran off with each other, and...I was left behind, on my own. My grades went to shit, until the college kicked me out, and I had to apply for some crappy online school to try and salvage my degree. Which made my parents pretty upset with me, and that just exacerbated everything, and...yeah. It was a pretty dark year for me. I was probably responsible for a lot of Wraiths in that time, so...sorry, I guess."

"It's okay. I'm used to the idea. You should see how many my Gran makes in a month."

I chuckled. "You have a Gran?"

"Semi-adoptive parent. I live with her. Three guesses for how we met."

"...right. Sorry. I didn't even think about-"

"Annie...relax." Serena's hand squeezed Nika's shoulder as she offered a comforting smile. "Just finish the story, alright?"

"There's...not much more to it. After a while apart, we all kind of realized how much we missed each other. So Cerise reached out to me, and...that's where we are now. Friends, more or less, and all just trying to figure out where we stand now. That was...eight months ago, I think? Three of those months were spent with me crushing on you instead of obsessing over my own stupidity, so that helped. Then I stalked you last week and...you know the rest."

Serena snorted with laughter. "Yeah. Because _that's_ when things got complicated."

Nika couldn't stop herself from laughing. Even if that meant she also couldn't stop the first traces of tears from reaching her eyes. "I know, right!? My life went from soap opera episode to trashy fanfiction in ten seconds flat!"

They shared a little laugh, but something about it just felt...disingenuous. Like the two ladies were both ignoring their feelings just to try and enjoy a bad joke.

After things quieted down between the two of them, Serena questioned, "So you were crushing on me for that long?"

"I...d-did I say crushing?"

"Yeah. Between that and, 'Serena, you big dumbass, I'm in _love_ with you!', I think I get the picture."

Annika silently tried to hide her furious embarrased blushing. Halfhearted as it was, it was still an attempt.

Serena either didn't notice or didn't care. "More importantly, how did you crush on me for _that_ long without me noticing?"

"Y-You're...you actually didn't notice? I thought I was being so obvious..."

"You weren't. Or you were and I missed it, or...dammit, seriously, how did I _miss_ that!?"

Nika's blush faded into a smirk. "...you're not the best with social cues, are you?"

"I-I'm perfectly fine with social cues, thank you very much! I just...something! Wraiths or something! Blame it on the Wraiths!"

Annika laughed, honestly and gleefully, for the first time in what had felt like years. "It's okay, Serena. I still think you're cute."

And just like that, the mood came crashing back down. Serena even visibly winced, like the words Annika instantly regretted had physically slapped her back to reality.

Words started tumbling out of Annika's mouth, like they were lassos trying to retract her previous blunder. "I...Serena, I'm sorry, I just kind of blurted it out, I-"

She was cut off by Serena's finger pressed against her lips. Serena spent a few moments staring at the floor, silently gathering her thoughts, before speaking.

"Look, Annie...it's not that I don't like you. I do. You're kinda my best friend right now, and...yeah, you're...pretty cute. And stuff. It's just..." Serena's hands clasped themselves in her lap, her thumbs twiddling nervously. "...don't you think we're moving way too fast? You've known the real me for all of a week, and a lot of stuff's been changing and going on these past couple days that's just...I need to process that before I even think about how I feel about you. And then...me being a Magical Girl causes us all kinds of problems.

"I mean...I'm not likely to shatter anytime soon. Or I don't think I am. So I've probably got another decade left in me, best-case scenario. But once I'm past my prime, every fight gets harder and harder until it finally kills me. And that's supposing everything goes perfectly, which...that might be too little time to really be worth it. Then, if I die in a Labyrinth, there won't be a body. I'll just be a missing person forever, and I can't imagine that's easy to deal with for you. It's certainly not easy for me.

"I don't mean to be harsh, but...that's just the facts. That's how it is. It's not all fun and games, being a Magical Girl. It's not the kind of thing you can take lightly." Serena paused for a few moments, and when her voice returned, it was barely a whisper. "Actually...if you _did_ take that lightly, I...I think I'd be...really upset with you."

Silence reigned supreme for a long time. Annika spent it quietly digesting Serena's words, while Serena spent it shooting nervous sidelong glances at the non-magical girl.

Finally, Annika had collected her thoughts enough to respond properly.

"You're right, Serena. We...should definitely be going a little slower, especially with everything that's been going on. Heh...and after I spent so long trying to figure out how you really felt...would you believe that just asking you had never even occurred to me?"

"After your little storytime, I can definitely believe that."

Nika chuckled. "Yeah. But...probably because of that whole mess, I'm...I'm not ready for you to leave my life. Not anytime soon. Yes, we need time to settle our lives down and sort out our feelings, but...I don't want that time to stretch on forever. That's all I'm asking for."

"You realize I could drop dead at any given moment, right?"

"Well...yeah. We just went over that. But at least, if you die in battle or whatever, it won't be because you decided you hate me. Does that make sense?"

Serena wordlessly nodded.

Once she realized that she wasn't going to get a verbal response, Annika perked up slightly. "Hey, how about this? We give ourselves a few days to sort our feelings out, and then...you have Friday morning off, right?"

"...for a few hours, yeah."

"There's a new Syfy movie that just came out, and I've heard it's pretty far into the So-Bad-It's-Good territory. So...y-you wanna just kick back with a beer and heckle some shitty monster movie?"

"...deal. What's the movie?"

"It's called Crocorilla or something."

"God, it even _sounds_ trashy."

"Doesn't it just!? Tearing into it is gonna be _great_!"

Serena finally smiled. "You're kinda scary when you're in this mood."

"And if I'm scaring a Magical Girl, I must be _horrifying_!"

"I mean, hey, not every human can slap around a Nightmare with a goddamn frying pan."

"A frying pan that got ruined in the process, now that I think about it..."

"And on that lovely note, I think I'd better skedaddle. Kris' shift'll be ending soon, so I need to take up the mantle."

Annika stood up with Serena, preparing to see her out. Or at least, out into the hall of the apartment building. But part of her mind was putting pieces together, creating an idea-

"I'll see you later, Annie."

"Right." Annie offered a half-hug with one arm. "Stay safe, okay Serena?"

The half hug left Annika surprisingly non-responsive. Normally, something like this would send her heart fluttering across the seven seas, but...it only managed the Mediterranean for some reason.

 _'I must be pretty emotionally twisted up right now if_ this _isn't doing anything...'_ she thought to herself.

The goodbyes between Annika and Serena were quick and uneventful. More than anything, though, Nika was distracted by the idea starting to take shape in her head. Even after she changed into her hoodie and pajama-pants to eat dinner on the couch, the idea kept nagging at her.

A quick text to Marianne got her the address she needed. Once her plan was set in motion, Annika silently thanked the Barista Gods that she didn't have work the next morning, before turning on some romantic comedy about a human falling in love with a robot.

All the movie did was frustrate her.

* * *

The apartment building Nika'd found herself at was beyond sketchy. Windows were cracked, railings were rusted, concrete was flaking, and the lock on the door looked like something that belonged in a high-security prison. But several different checks confirmed that, yes, this _was_ the building that she was looking for.

Annika scoured through the call box, before she finally found the right name. After that, it only took a couple rings before she caught the voice of a very specific, very annoyed, very vulgar pubescent teenager.

" _WHAT!?_ "

"Kristina? It's Annika Mara. I want to make a deal with you."

"Blondie!? I thought I told you, it's _Kris_. Now go away!"

"I'm not leaving."

"...fine! Get up here, so I can punch your stupid fucking lights out! It'll be a nice way to start off my morning."

The door clacked open, and Annika scoured through the building until she finally located Apartment 3B. Three sharp knocks, and Kris' murderous face was framed by the shoddy door and her own ratty pajamas.

"What do you want, Blondie?"

Annika took a deep breath. Then, she made her demands with a firm tone and a confident pose.

"I want you to teach me how to fight Wraiths."

Silence. Then Kris sputtered. Then she burst out into full-blown raucous laughter.

"Ohhhh, that's funny! That's fuckin' priceless! Some skinny blonde prick wants to learn to fight Wraiths! Aaahahahaha! Oh sweet Madoka, I can't handle this shit!"

"I'm not joking." As Kristina's laughter began to fade, Annika filled in the space with her own voice. "It's only a matter of time before I get attacked again, or someone I care about gets caught in a Labyrinth. When that happens...I don't want to be some damsel running around with a purse while she waits for rescue."

Kris' laughter finally faded, and she studied Nika's face for any signs of humor. When she found none, Kristina simply scoffed. "You actually mean it. You _actually_ wanna learn how to fight?"

"Absolutely."

"It's not like you can kill any of 'em, you know. And you won't be able to shield yourself from human perception like Magical Girls can."

"I'm...aware of that." Part of my brain fixated on that whole "shield yourself from perception" comment, but I stored that question away for later. "But if I can at least fend them off, or buy time for a rescue, then that's a lot more than what I can do right now."

Kris silently stared for a moment, before she grinned. "Well, I guess you've got some moxy after all, Blondie. I'm _so_ gonna enjoy breaking you..."

In all of one second, Annika's confidence disappeared. "B-Breaking? You...you mean that metaphorically, right?"

Kristina's grin only grew.

* * *

 **A/N:** Bit of a short chapter this time around, but that was mostly because this was the best place I could think of to end this one. Still, here's hoping I can get the next one done in a reasonable timeframe.

Thanks for reading! ^^


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